Home > What's The Problem? >
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 29, 2009
My introduction to Jason Mendelson came by way of a compelling how-to blog post he wrote titled: Quick Ways To Get Fired as a Lawyer. From the first read through, it's clear that Jason knows what he’s talking about. As a self-proclaimed “recovering lawyer” and successful VC with his own company, Foundry Group. he’s gained insight into the best and worst of legal service delivery from both sides of the fence.
Through the wonders of six-degrees-of-separation (many thanks to Debbie Huttner and Michael Huttner), I connected with Jason and had a lively discussion on the topic of re-designing legal services around the client experience.
AH: How many lawyers have you worked with over the years?
JM: 2,000-3,000.
AH: What percentage of these lawyers were excellent?
JM: 5%
AH: What makes a lawyer that pretty rare kind of advisor that inspires client evangelism – someone who provides such meaningful service that clients voluntarily shout his or her praises?
JM: I think it’s a combination of factors:
1. Team Feeling/Proactive Representation: You want to get the sense that your lawyer is part of your team and interested in your business. You want them to be there for you and thinking about you/your business when you need them to, and also thinking about you/your business even when you don’t need them for a particular matter. This sounds obvious but it rarely happens.
2. Consistency: This means not swapping out people. For example, in the initial meeting, you meet with certain lawyers, you build rapport and a connection with them and then you end up with different lawyers working on your deal.
3. Creativity: If you can think creatively and strategically on how to manage the legal issue in an efficient and effective way, you will get into the Lawyer Rock Star Hall of Fame.
AH: That gives us a good sense of the lawyer’s side of the coin. Are clients at all responsible for creating their own positive experiences with legal service consumption/delivery?
JM: The irony is that people who hire lawyers have no idea if the lawyer is any good. I give entrepreneurs 5-6 questions to ask potential lawyers when interviewing them. But the truth is that any lawyer can get past those questions. The best is to ask present or former clients of that lawyer/law firm and to ask other lawyers who have worked with the lawyer on opposite sides of a deal or dispute. Lots of lawyers can get a great reference, show up and woo you in a board meeting but then they don’t really know how to get the work done. They don’t do quality work.
So, yes, I think the client has some responsibility for ensuring their own positive service delivery experience. I riff on this in my Lawyer Bill of Rights. If a client doesn’t follow it, the client has no right to complain.
Thanks, Jason, for lending your insights into client experience design and helping us build legal sanity.
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 22, 2009
Even though there’s been a bit more encouraging news about the state of the economy, the media (mainstream and otherwise) still inundates us with story after story of global, national, local, professional and personal crises in the face of the financial undertow. Even my 8-year-old - who’s mood largely rises and falls with the performance of his beloved New York Mets - told me the other day that people on the news look so unhappy or angry that “they should just call it the ‘bad news hour.’”
He makes a great point. As lawyers, on the professional front alone, we consume huge helpings of bad news every day – from mainstream media coverage of the economic downturn to niche stories on the sorry state of the legal profession and the latest tallies on law firm firings and closures. It can be a real challenge to not get weighed down and stressed out on this steady diet of negativity.
So, I was very heartened to read a great Harvard Business post in which leadership consultant John Baldoni compels us to Find Ways to Make Good News. Baldoni opens by crediting CNN for its coverage of the life and death of Stephen Tyrone Johns, a Holocaust Museum security guard who was shot and killed in the line of duty by a white supremacist. He then asserts that business leaders owe themselves and their “people” a “break from the relentless progress of bad news.” To help them along, Baldoni suggests that they find and share one piece of good news every day. Or, taking it a step further, they can make some good news via their own positive actions.
You’ll find some complementary tips and tools in this New York Times story on Dealing with Recession-Related Stress. If you’re in the Washington, DC Metro Area on June 24-26, my friend and colleague Charlie Badenhop is leading a stress management workshop for coaches, consultants, leaders and other professionals. You can learn more about it here.
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 8, 2009
Lately, when I’ve been out and about for business and socially, I’ve noticed that conversations often turn to the topic of happiness – what true happiness is; what makes us happy; what makes us unhappy (and variations on these themes). The topic also seems to be winding its way through the commercial space, where you’ll find sentimental/upbeat ads like this one from Allsate and this from Target. I suppose this all makes a lot of sense. When we’re challenged in our lives – physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually – we start asking the “big questions” about meaning and fulfillment.
In its first incarnation, this blog focused quite a bit on the malaise plaguing the legal profession and people who inhabit it. As part of my investigation into the problem and search for solutions, I read and commented on the rocky road to lawyer happiness. In one of the more recent posts on the subject, I mentioned the important work attorney Daniel Lukasik is doing through his website, Lawyers with Depression.
Part of decoding happiness in any given population is getting an honest accounting of what might put that milestone out of reach. Daniel offers us that candid insight via his website and new companion blog. You can gain additional insight from lawyer Timothy A. Tosta’s article on Overcoming Stickiness, this post on lawyer burnout and this article offering help for attorneys in crisis.
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 19, 2009
In my last post, I noted that we’ve entered a new age of radical transparency in which businesses must be keenly aware of their consumer community (or, communities) and make it easy for community members to offer feedback and comments. For most law firms and lawyers, this requires a big shift towards understanding, valuing and heightening the client experience.
I recently spent some time talking to law firm consultant Gerry Riskin. A co-founder and principal of Edge International, Gerry is a widely recognized expert on managing professional service firms. He shares his views at his terrific blog, Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices, and via Twitter. I asked Gerry for his thougts on client experience management.
AH: How important is the client experience?
GR: It’s extremely critical and I base that on what people have reported to me about firms they’ve worked with. For instance, the general counsel of a huge financial institution hiring literally hundreds of law firms described his favorite firm this way: “When I get there, the receptionist greets me by name and offers a decent refreshment. There’s good, current reading material in the waiting area. The person who I’m there to see comes out promptly. But, even before that, other people come along and say hello to me while I'm sitting there.”
AH: So, his experience didn’t turn on the quality, quantity or price of the legal advice he received.
GR: Right. And let's be honest, if he was in Buenos Aires and needed immediate brain surgery and the one and only brain surgeon in Buenos Aires was a jerk, he would use that jerk brain surgeon because he had no choice. But, when it's anything that more than one person can provide of equal quality, it comes down to the experience. I think – and I will include myself here - all of us would like to think of ourselves as having expertise, as being special and particularly knowledgeable. We don't like to think we're easily replicable. But, the truth is in most respects we're not unique.
AH: So, given that most firms and lawyers are indistinguishable in terms of their expertise, client experience becomes a key differentiator?
GR: Yes. And I don’t base my theory on that one example. It’s a common theme. In fact, on a recent plane trip, I sat next to next to a billionaire who's on the board of many pharmaceutical companies. I asked him to tell me about the law firms he likes and doesn’t like. Anyway, the punch line is, here is a powerful, powerful, powerful man whose biggest complaint about a law firm is his reception area experience and what he perceives to be the arrogance of partners walking through without bidding him good day. And, I bet those partners who walked by without acknowledging him were completely unaware of what they were doing (or not doing).
AH: So do you have a couple of nuggets of advice on what it takes to create the optimal client experience?
GR: Well, at the highest level of abstraction, you need to have complete empathy. Ask, “If I were the consumer of this service, what would I want?” The challenge is that we get blind spots based on familiarity. So you need fresh eyes and the best source of fresh eyes is your clients. Ask them: “Of all the law firms you've ever been to, of all the lawyers you've ever worked with, what do you like best and what should be done differently?” That allows your clients to be very candid without attacking you or your firm. You can also transpose your own experiences. Lawyers use other services, lawyers get annoyed by bad service here or delighted by good service there. Take a moment and analyze what makes your experience good or bad. Then ask the next question: “Do we do any of that in our environment?” Last, but of course not least, is training. Knowing is not doing. But, people have a very hard time getting that. They think once they know about something, they’re doing it. It's like listening. My wife says I should listen to her better so I think, oh, okay, I know the concept of listening so I'll listen to her better. But, it's not until I practice it, maybe get trained in it, maybe understand the structure of listening that I really listen better.
AH: Gerry, you’ve offered great insight into the client experience. Thanks so much for helping us cultivate legal sanity.
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 7, 2009
The other day, I passed by the Shake Shack in NYC’s Madison Square Park. The crowd was thick. But, as always, people seemed more than willing to wait it out for a delectable burger or frozen treat. As I watched the scene, I caught myself thinking, “Another amazing experience brought to you by Danny Meyer.”
A restaurateur of major note, Meyer has multiple long-lived, successful eateries in a city filled with very discerning palates. In a recent talk he gave at NYU Stern, he attributed his success, in part, to “enlightened hospitality” – a focus on how the delivery of a product or service makes its recipient feel. He said you have to make customers feel that you’re on their side.
Interestingly, he also noted that, when it comes to creating a hospitable business culture, you first have to extend hospitality to the people who work for you. Only after setting this foundation can you extend it to others - like your customers, suppliers and investors.
This idea of hospitality makes a lot of sense to me and I think it's very relevant to the law. I’ve always believed that a positive law firm culture roots in a positive employee (legal and non-legal) experience. So, law firms looking to build - or rebuild - their business environment would do well to take Meyer’s lead into the hospitality business.
For more on creating a positive consumer experience (lawyers, after all, are prime consumers of law firm culture), you can take a look at these posts and articles:
Triage Customer Service
How to Nurture Relationships with Your Gem Clients
Coddle and Keep Customers
A Lesson from the Dentist
Posted by Arnie Herz on April 30, 2009
I named my blog Legal Sanity because I wanted to be a voice for sanity in an increasingly insane legal world. Although this post is off topic for the legal world, I am writing today as a voice for sanity in our world at large. I just received an automated voice mail from the Superintendent of Schools of where I live updating us on the measures the school is about to take should the Swine Flu strike here in Port Washington, New York. This message, and the emails and letters that followed, spurred me to write this post.
The swine flu panic is insane. Yes, it is a new disease that can kill people but there needs to be PERSPECTIVE because the over the top reactive responses from those in leadership positions will certainly cause more damage than the Swine Flu. So now all after school activities in the State of Texas are cancelled for the remainder of the school year. How tragic! Tens of thousands of teenage kids without a healthy after school activity will be milling about with too much time on their hands. Will they not still commingle with their friends? Does the Swine Flu only hang out at the school track? How many of these kids will be passing the time drinking and getting into trouble? What will their parents do in managing the situation? Are we going to follow in the footsteps of the Mexican government and shut down the economy for a week? How many lives will be destroyed from the additional unemployment?
30,000-40,000 people die each year in the USA alone from the flu. I don’t mean to sound callous, but this is life. There are a host of diseases and dangers that kill tens of thousands of people a day throughout the world.
PANDEMIC. Such a scary word. What a media darling it is because it fuels fear and fear sells. The 1968 Hong Kong flu was the last pandemic. It killed one million people, a tragic number. But let’s get some perspective. Every year, on average, 1.2 million people die from traffic accidents, 2 million from AIDS, 8 million from cancer, 18 million from heart disease, 40 million from malaria. All these numbers are fast rising. The list of global killers far more powerful than the 1968 Hong Kong Flu goes on and on. If you want to cheer up your day, take some time reading through the World Health Organization website. I promise you, by the time you are done, you won’t be so worried about the Swine Flu.
Bottom line is that life is dangerous and the possibility of death looms for us all in any moment. So should we box ourselves in germ free padded bomb shelters? Of course not. Why? Because the chance of dying today or tomorrow or the next day is fairly remote. For most of us, there is a 99.9% percent chance you’ll still be breathing and worrying a week, month and year from now. Of course we need to be vigilant and take reasonable measures to prevent getting sick. However, we need to relax, live our lives and not panic our kids.
With all that is going on the world, it’s not nearly as challenging or dangerous as it was on March 4, 1933, in the height of the Great Depression and World War II. In his inaugural speech, FDR showed brilliant leadership in calming down a nation and a world by helping people move past their fear and paralysis when he so eloquently stated "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself."
This advice is perfect for today. It’s critical that we not let our fear generate actions that cause us more harm than good.
Posted by Arnie Herz on April 29, 2009
Do you have a Michigan Wolverines trash can or plastic helmet (you know, the blue wolverine that sits on your head)? I did …. until they met an ill fate at the hands of someone who just doesn’t understand what it means to sing Hail to the Victors until your heart pounds and tears well up.
Even though this week marks the 25th anniversary of my college graduation, time and space haven't changed how I feel about the institution (and its football team). I’m not the tattoo kind. But, if I were, my one and only one would read, Go Blue!. Yes, I’m forever part of the University of Michigan tribe. And, judging by our conversations over the years and at this milestone moment, my college friends are, too.
I’ve been posting on this kind of tribal affiliation lately and thinking about how it applies to the law, in general, and to law firm culture, in particular. Especially in these unsettled - and unsettling - times, law firms need to foster the connecting points between lawyer and non-lawyer employees at every level. But, as this thoughtful piece points out, it’s not a matter of manufacturing connections and building a tribe. The real question is: “Do [we] have a community and how can [we] harness it?”
If you’re a law firm leader and you’re not sure if you have a tribal community (or communities) to harness, you’ll find some good guidance in this slideshow based on Seth Godin’s latest book, Tribes. Godin sheds some more light on the matter in a recent Wired interview and in this blog post on tribe management.
Posted by Arnie Herz on April 14, 2009
Authentic. Transparent. Human.
These three words come up again and again in conversations about creating and sustaining business relationships in the current marketplace. For lawyers, this really isn’t about a new way of relating to our clients, prospects and colleagues. It’s about getting back to our roots as service providers and connecting with the people behind the legal matters we take on. The practice of law has always been about helping people solve problems, overcome challenges and meet goals. But, somewhere along the way, the legal profession (with the help of law schools) lost sight of its human nature.
Over the years, I’ve posted on the importance of bringing ourselves back to our work so we can authentically relate to our clients and others:
In his new book, Fuel the Spark: 5 Guiding Values for Success in Law & Life, Colorado attorney Kevin Houchin shares practical wisdom on cultivating an authentic life in the law. Legal Sanity Co-producer Lori Herz asked Kevin for his thoughts on (re)designing the lawyer-client relationship for a better client experience.
LH: You set out five guiding values in your book: Accept; Show Up; Pay Attention; Many irons In The Fire; and Stewardship. They’re all relevant to cultivating a meaningful life in, and outside of, the law. But, I’d like to focus on the first one – Accept. In the chapter on this guidepost, you write something that I find particularly compelling:
“There are many things about the legal profession you must simply accept because you cannot change them. But there are also many things you can change because you control your outlook, your goals, and your choices. To maintain balance in your practice and your life, you must first identify what you are willing to accept and what you are willing to accept the responsibility for changing.”
How do you think this pertains to the way lawyers can connect with clients and others in everyday practice?
KH: The possibilities here are as endless as the combinations of lawyers, clients and matters.The first level of this value aims to help us think about the types of cases we take on and what that means to society. For instance, I don't accept criminal or divorce cases. Accordingly, since I don't accept personal responsibility for changing those situations for those clients, I have accepted to let those situations exist as they are - hoping other attorneys will accept the responsibility to take the necessary steps to help society.
At the next level, we can choose how we will interact with our clients, but it's important that we don't judge either our clients or ourselves too harshly. Each client is different, some are very business-like and don't want a lot of small talk, especially if they think the "clock is running.” Others simply want someone to listen to their full story and empathize, even if we could jump in with the answer after only a few minutes. I talk a little bit about this in the section discussing my theory that to receive respect from our clients and peers, we must first surrender our instinct to judge.
LH: Yes, in that section you encourage us to identify what we must surrender in order to receive the changes we want in our law practice. As an example of this surrender-to-receive dynamic, you write:
“When you surrender judgment, you automatically open up to the possibility that the other person is worthy of respect. In turn, that makes it easier for the other person to open up to the possibility that you are worthy of respect.”
I really like this couplet. I call this “mutuality” in business relationships – a genuine kind of give and take. Is this what you’re getting at?
KH: "Mutuality." I like that word. I hadn't thought of it exactly that way, but it works. To some extent, we have to put ourselves emotionally in the trenches with our client's immediate challenge. When they know that we are with them emotionally, as well as physically and intellectually, something changes. The trust deepens. As I discussed before, I don't take on criminal cases because I don't know if I could let myself be that open to the client in those situations. That's just me. The important thing is to know yourself well enough that you do your best to only take on cases where you are able to form this kind of emotional bond with your client. It helps you be a better lawyer, and on a practical note, it will shorten the time it takes to get paid for your work because the client knows you're not just helping them for the money.
LH: To surrender our judgment in the lawyer-client relationship, we need to really listen to our clients and not talk over and around them with a deaf ear. This syncs with another of your guiding values – Pay Attention. You write:
“We sometimes deal with clients during very difficult times in their lives, so paying attention to how they are saying something may allow you to alleviate some discomfort, heal some harm, remove some shame, and get to the bottom of the problem.”
Can you share a personal experience with this?
KH: The simplest thing happens fairly often in my office because I'm a true solo and do not have a receptionist. The phone will ring in the middle of a meeting and my client might look at me with some surprise that I don't move to answer it. This gives me a chance to let them know that I'm paying attention to them in the moment. Take it a step farther and you're squarely in the active-listening techniques. In those active listening situations, you find the chance to make the emotional connection. Showing that you have personally made the same mistake the client made in a situation, letting them know they aren't stupid, or that others have done the same thing pretty often removes their shame and fear and helps you start solving the problem. The next step of paying attention is watching for ways to help your clients when they're not in the room - referrals or becoming a fan of their product on Facebook are good examples. Following them on Twitter is another. Basically, becoming their friend instead of just their attorney will go a long way toward helping you be a better lawyer. It will also bring you more business and help you reach your own personal goals for success.
LH: Kevin, thanks for sharing your thoughts on client service and helping us cultivate legal sanity. We wish you all the best with your new book.
Posted by Arnie Herz on April 10, 2009
Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity– Albert Einstein
Spring. Passover. Easter. It’s the time of year when we’re reminded that we’re resilient by nature and can move through challenges to a place of renewal and possibility.
Just as we survey and fix up our personal space during a spring cleaning, we can take an honest look at our business practices and see what’s worn out, broken or just no longer useful. For many law firms and lawyers, this process will reveal some areas of client service that have fallen into disrepair.
As you assess the problem and weigh possible fixes, you can gain some inspiration and practical advice from these sources:
Five Things - Do them and Clients will Love You
Speak Your Customer’s Language
Is Your Brand Vulnerable?
Word of the day: Relevant
On being a chief evangelist
Who’s in Charge of Your Company Culture?
Roam Before You Pave
Posted by Arnie Herz on April 3, 2009
I’m happy to announce that I’m launching a new feature here called the legal sanity mentor.
Each month, experts and influencers across a range of fields will share their views on and around the topic of designing client-centered legal services.
This is a topic – and a mission - that’s taken on a lot of personal and professional significance for me as I’ve grown my solo practice. It’s also gained a great deal of attention outside the law due to the advent of a consumer culture valuing meaning, positive experience and emotional connection.
I’m publishing the first post in this series next week. It’s an interview with Smart Design founder Dan Formosa (full disclosure: Smart design is my client). With products like OXO Good Grips kitchen tools and Ford’s new SmartGauge instrument panel to its credit, Smart Design has pioneered the art and science of understanding and designing for the consumer experience.
If you want to preview Dan’s insights and work, he’ll be today’s guest on Debbie Millman’s VoiceAmerica radio show, Design Matters. You can listen to the live stream at 3PM EST. For time shifters, it will also be available at iTunes.
I look forward to presenting the legal sanity mentor to you and, as always, welcome your feedback and suggestions about it.
Posted by Arnie Herz on April 2, 2009
Here are two facts:
- There’s a client service deficit in the law.
- Lawyers tend to regard emotions – their own and other people’s – as irrelevant to their work.
At first glance, these two facts seem unrelated. But they’re actually closely (even intimately) connected.
Some time back, I posted on the interplay of emotions and client service in this new era of customer control. I linked to a ClickZ article citing a (then) new book by Dan Hill called Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds. Launching from the premise that humans are primarily emotional decision-makers, the book discusses how emotions factor into our business opportunities in the marketplace and workplace.
Picking up on this point from a slightly different angle, in a recent post, designer and marketing mentor Peleg Top says, Go ahead, get emotional. Top notes that, in marketing (and, I’d add, in providing) our services, “an effective way to generate action is to tell a compelling story, one that hits your customer’s emotions.” Suggesting that most service providers miss this mark, he observes:
If you look at the majority of service companies [ ], the common story is all about who they are and what they do best. If I’m the customer, why would I believe them? What would compel me to trust that they really know what MY problem is? What my needs are? No feelings are generated and I will pass over them without a second thought.
In this new economy, feelings are a main form of currency. It may require a leap into the unknown for many lawyers, but to build strong and lasting business relationships, we need to give our clients the emotional connection they’re craving.
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 20, 2009
A while back, I wrote a post around Seth Godin’s observations on remarkability. He noted that fear of criticism, rather than fear of failure, holds us back from producing services, goods and other results that are truly remarkable.
Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about Godin’s view and talked to others about it. It seems to me that, for lawyers, there may be a more fundamental issue in play: Many in the law don’t understand (or think much about) what it means to be a remarkable service provider.
I covered this point in posts on client evangelism and client experience management. Shedding some new light on the matter is this article outlining several ways to be remarkable in business. For a compelling example of remarkability-in-action, check out this first-hand recounting of Whole Food’s “awesome” (a/k/a/ remarkable) customer service If you find that anecdote inspiring, you’ll likely get a lot out of the presentation (Part 1 and Part.2 ) that Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh gave at SXSW '09.
Bringing it full circle is Seth Godin’s recent post asking if we’re looking to fit in or stand out.
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 17, 2009
I grew up and live just outside New York City.
In the days and weeks after 9/11, I felt so sad. It was not just the personal loss I experienced. It was a more pervasive feeling that the world as I knew it no longer existed. My foundation of safety and security – the foundation I was working so hard to build and sustain for my young family – had been rocked.
At the same time, I couldn’t help but notice the sense of community and camaraderie that was rising. We’ve all heard and read moving stories of strangers helping each other and people’s amazing generosity of time, energy and spirit. As it was facing the reality of the day and trying to move on and heal, a culture of connection grew in New York City.
In the last post I wrote here pre-hiatus, I reengaged the topic of creating a connection culture in the law. With the downturn in our economy and within the legal profession, the need for this kind of culture is greater than ever. And so is the opportunity for creating it. As firms take a good hard look at the state of their business, they can and should consider the state of their business culture. If it’s in disarray, steps can be taken to understand what’s wrong and make positive changes.
I just read Peter D. Zeughauser’s take on Four Essential Elements of a Strong Law Firm Culture. Launching from the premise that “successful growth can only be accomplished from a position of strength, broadly defined to include a culture that breeds partners who are in it for each other, not just themselves,” he identifies the essential four as:
- Hard work
- Rewards for rainmakers
- Knowing who you are (and who you aren’t)
- Transparency, with discretion
While Zeughauser provides valuable insight into the partner side of the connection culture, firms also have to consider how to bring their associates into the cultural mix. According to consultant Susan Letterman White, one way to do this is to encourage and create avenues for peer-to-peer coaching.
According to White, peer-to-peer coaching differs from more traditional lawyer coaching (full disclosure: one of my professional hats is business coach for lawyers) and lawyer mentoring in that:
Peer-to-peer coaching is [ ] between two people who are at the same or similar levels within the law firm. The intention of the relationship is to mutually and similarly benefit the peers, unlike traditional coaching or mentoring, where the primary benefit is intended for the less experienced person. By working together to make sense of particular problems, gaps in knowledge or needed skill development, each person learns about his or her strengths and weaknesses and those of the other. Together the pair learns how to change weaknesses into strengths and use opportunities for development. This benefits the individuals and the law firm.
I’ve always been a big proponent of mutuality in business relationships. The mutuality that peer-to-peer coaching fosters will only solidify the sense of community and common purpose that are key connecting points for firm lawyers.
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 12, 2009
Many of the lawyers I talk to share that, at some point on their legal career path, they’ve realized that they’re uninspired by their work. For some, this realization has led to a job or career change. For others, it’s the start of long-term discontent.
Recently, my daughter showed me an assignment from career week at her middle school. She had explored some career options and settled on a couple that really appealed to her. Both were in what I refer to as healing professions. When I asked why she chose them, she replied that she was inspired by the prospect of helping people understand, and feel good about, themselves.
That night, I found myself thinking a lot about inspiration - how crucially important it is to our success and happiness in and outside the law. Coincidently (or not), I was checking my RSS feeds and came across a captivating post at Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen. It was about the presentation that oceanographer Sylvie Earle gave at this year’s TED Conference.
Earle is an engaging speaker, to be sure. But, watching her talk, what’s most palpable and moving for me is how inspired she is by her work exploring and protecting the earth’s oceans. I find her inspiration contagious.
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 31, 2008
A few weeks back, I wrote about the importance of
creating a connection culture in the law . One of the best ways for law firms to create connecting points for their lawyers is to gain insight into points of disconnection. As I’ve previously noted, two frequently cited
causes of lawyer disconnect are the competitive nature of the business and long working hours.
According to a post from
Chris Bailey at the always-interesting
Bailey Workplay blog, another major cause is
invisibility. Bailey attributes this problem to incompetent leadership. Specifically, he asserts that managers can do a lot of damage when they ignore employees. Ignoring actions, in turn, can take different forms, including:
- Not acknowledging contributions
- Not recognizing expertise
- Not seeing the individual worth
As this
post from Matt Homann suggests, anxiety can also promote lawyer disconnection. Homann points to a Harvard Business article that tells us
How to Deal with Anxious People. The piece leads with an anatomical fact: When we’re anxious, our minds constrict and we’re more apt to cut off our rationality and act impulsively. Consequently, law firm leaders looking to alleviate anxiety – and the disconnection it can foster – need to talk
to or
with anxious lawyers rather than
at or
over them.
The article goes on to instruct that the best way to navigate these challenging talks is to observe the anxious person’s body language. People who feel that they’re being talked over will “leave the conversation at the earliest opportunity.” When they’re talked at, people tend to tuck their chin down or stick it out to show that they’re intimidated or ticked off, respectively. By contrast, when you talk to an anxious person, they’ll “nod from the neck up.” Similarly, someone who senses that they’re being talked with will usually relax their shoulders and neck, “as if you've told them: ‘It'll be okay. We can work this out.’”
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 23, 2008
In
past posts, I’ve discussed
the broken windows theory as it relates to the practice of law and, more specifically, to the creation and cure of client service problems. In a nutshell, the theory holds that firms should focus on identifying and quickly repairing their broken windows – those aspects of their operation that signal an indifference to client satisfaction.
As this
Small Firm Business article conveys, law firms looking to stem client dissatisfaction - and the attrition it can compel – often conduct client surveys. The surveys are drafted and administered to obtain feedback about:
- Clients' satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the attorneys and staff who served them
- The timeliness, responsiveness and value of work performed
- The need for additional services and greater cost or quality control
- The need for greater lawyer specialization
- Whether clients would use the firm again and refer the firm to friends and associates
As the article suggests, it’s a fairly futile and wasteful for firms to undertake these surveys if they don’t follow-up and redress the client service issues brought to light.
To bridge this gap between intelligence gathering and action, some firms are “creating specific positions to facilitate and organize communication between major firm clients and the attorneys representing them.” That’s the message in
a recent article from The Recorder featured at law.com.
Led by
client service executives with titles like
Chief of Practice Excellence; law firm client relations teams “provide attorneys with news on the clients' activities and goals, serve as point people for clients with questions or issues and help attorneys maintain regular contact with clients.”
It would be interesting to compare the client opinion on firms embracing this team approach with the client perception of firms that do little or nothing to inspect and repair their broken windows.
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 10, 2008
A little while back, I wrote a post on
creating a more fulfilling legal career. It conveyed my thoughts on a
New York Times article describing the diminishing lure of the law.
One of the resonant complaints I hear from lawyers is that they feel very disconnected from their colleagues and firms. They attribute their sense of isolation to, among other things, the competitive nature of the business and long working hours. These kinds of complaints inspired me to write posts like:
Their common theme is
connection – the damage caused by its absence and ways to build it in the legal profession.
Connection is also the theme of a new
ChangeThis manifesto by leadership expert
Michael Lee Stallard. Titled
The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage (pdf), the manifesto poses the compelling question:
What is it about connection that makes it so powerful?
Stallard offers up this gem of an answer:
“[W]e are humans, not machines. We have emotions. We have hopes and dreams. We have a conscience. We have deeply felt human needs to be respected, to be recognized for our talents, to belong. [ ] When we work in an environment that recognizes these realities of our human nature, we thrive. [ ] When we work in an environment that fails to recognize this, it is damaging to our mental and physical health.”
He then explains and explores the core elements of a workplace Connection Culture:
- Vision (“everyone in an organization is motivated by the organization’s mission, united by its values, and proud of its reputation”)
- Value (“everyone in an organization understands the universal nature of people, appreciates the unique contribution of each person, and helps them achieve their potential”)
- Voice (“everyone in an organization participates in an open, honest and safe environment where people share their opinions in order to understand one another and seek the best ideas”)
Stallard aids our understanding, and amplifies his message, by giving examples of businesses and business leaders who have successfully embraced these core components.
Posted by Arnie Herz on January 30, 2008
In the last several years, I’ve logged a lot of online and offline hours learning, thinking and teaching about
work-life synergy for lawyers (pdf). Although different issues converge under this umbrella, one topic that garners a lot of attention is flexible work options. It’s something I’ve addressed in posts on:
About a month ago, I came across a boston.com article on
workplace trends for 2008. In it, columnist Maggie Jackson declares: “Fluidity is in. Piecemeal flexing is out.” She’s referring to a movement in corporate America to retrain the focus away from flexible work programs and towards the more fluid “Mass Career Customization" (MCC).
Championed by
Cathleen Benko of Deloitte & Touche, MCC presumes that, today, more and more employees want to tailor their careers by “periodically adjusting their work pace, job setting and schedule, workload, and company role.”
After reading the article, I went over to Deloitte’s website and continued my MCC studies through a podcast that explores how
MCC is not just a women’s initiative. Given the emergence of a
dual-centric workforce, career customization serves the needs of men and women alike. I also vetted this series of in-house articles on
Building a Lattice Organization. (The MCC model can be visualized as a career
lattice - with numerous paths leading to different kinds of success – as opposed to a career
ladder.)
In the wake of this education, I started considering the ways MCC might play out in the legal profession. Law firms aren't known for being early adopters of new workplace trends. That’s why it was so interesting to read a recent New York Times article – aptly titled
Who’s Cuddly Now? Law Firms – that profiles a new proposal to bring customized career tracks to the law.
The proposal, called FACTS, is the brainchild of work-life consultant
Deborah Epstein Henry. Henry doesn’t propose that firms do away with the billable hour. Rather, she suggests that they move from a liner to a more fluid billable hour model that recognizes how lawyers’ work-life needs may change at different stages of their careers. The acronym FACTS reflects the variety of work hour modes that Henry envisions:
To learn more about the FACTS, you can read
Henry’s article outlining her methodology (pdf). Those of you in the New York area can join in the conversation when Henry presents her program on Monday, March 3, 2008. To learn more about the program and register for it, visit
Flex-Time Lawyers.
Posted by Arnie Herz on January 24, 2008
It’s probably no mere coincidence that at a time of
political challenge and
economic uncertainty in the United States, there’s been a flurry of coverage on the subject of …
happiness.
For some time now, I’ve been intrigued by the science and study of happiness, as evidenced in this post on
the road to lawyer happiness and this one that puts l
awyer happiness under the microscope.
So, I eagerly read a pair of recent
Christian Science Monitor articles on the subject.
The first piece - titled
Actually, Happiness Isn’t Within - challenges the “firmly held and particularly American belief that happiness” is an internal quality; a state of being, or wellbeing, that we cultivate from the inside out. Citing new findings by social scientists, the article asserts that our happiness is a byproduct of external factors. Topping the list of those outside influences “is the quantity and the quality of our relationships.” (Journalist Penelope Trunk echoes this point in a post that offers a few tests for discerning
what we need to be happier.)
Given this new happiness formula and the amount of time most of us spend on-the-job, it stands to reason that our happiness must be strongly linked to the quality of our work environment and business relationships. If we’re routinely unhappy doing what we do for a living, it’s a sure sign that these external components are unhealthy and stacked against us.
This is the underlying message of
Alexander Kjerulf’s CSM commentary on
cultivating happiness at work.
According to Kjerulf, it’s the norm for U.S. workers to be dissatisfied with their jobs. That’s because managers and employees alike fail to make workplace happiness a priority. This isn’t a
gosh, well, I guess that’s too bad fact of life. As Kjerulf puts it: “Hating your job is not an inconvenience, it's a serious problem. It can cause stress and depression. Ultimately, it can kill you.”
Lawyers should be acutely aware of the seriousness of this issue. As
Sue Shellenbarger (pdf) writes in an article on
Lawyers Opening Up About Depression, studies have found that about “19% of lawyers suffer depression at any given time, compared with 6.7% of the population as a whole.” While some might question the exact correlation between career stresses and depression, it seems that it’s
well accepted that the “practice of law, with constant conflict and billing pressures, can take a toll.”
Attorney
Daniel Lukasik contacted me last week to let me know about a
website he’s launched to support himself and other lawyers who are living and coping with the day-to-day realities of depression. I checked it out and it presents as a terrific and much-needed resource.
For another perspective on lawyers and depression,
Stephanie West Allen points us to a new book exploring the “benefits of negative emotions” and “how we might view depression in a more constructive way.”
Posted by Arnie Herz on January 10, 2008
Kevin O’Keefe and
Carolyn Elefant , among other bloggers, recently posted about this
New York Times piece on the diminishing lure of the law. I read the article when it first ran and liked it a lot. But, the news it imparted was not earth shattering by any stretch.
For years, theorists, academics and others have been decoding and commenting on the root causes of lawyer discontent and attrition. When
legal sanity launched in 2004, one of its
main objectives was to highlight their work and related efforts to remedy an ailing legal profession. Since then, coverage here has included posts on:
Threading through the broader conversation about life in the law today – and echoed in the New York Times article - is the realization that the legal profession is out of step with larger social-cultural-generational shifts towards creative personal and business pursuits. You can sample some of the discussion on the new “Creative Age” through these posts:
The lingering question for law firms and practitioners alike is
how to bring more creativity to the everyday practice of law. The first step, of course, is to acknowledge the creativity deficit and the problems deriving from it. From there, firms could take it to the people and ask their lawyers what kind of creative outlets and opportunities they’d like to have on the job. Beyond getting this direct input, firms could demonstrate their commitment to creativity through policy and marketing initiatives.
For some inspiration, firms can look to resources like this article on
creativity and success (emphasizing the “simple and wonderful truth that all people have the capacity to be creative”) and this terrific
marketing-lateral recruiting campaign from Chicago’s Ungaretti & Harris.
Posted by Arnie Herz on December 29, 2007
Environmental sustainability. In recent years, it’s become a big wheel of an issue with multiple spokes - from
climate change and
fossil fuels to the
greening of Wal-Mart and the upside of
buying local.
Many businesses are pursuing policies, programs and initiatives that help them
operate in environmentally responsible ways. But, there’s another kind of sustainability problem that remains largely unrecognized and untreated, especially in law firms. It’s the environmental threat that comes from having a disgruntled and disengaged workforce.
I’ve addressed this point before in posts on:
The nexus between business sustainability and employee engagement is brilliantly illustrated in this
video from
McDaniel Partners (tipped at
Be Excellent).
Law firm leaders can also gain insight into managing the employee experience from reader questions and expert answers shared at
Office-Politics. I’m an advisor to the site, which was recently featured in the
New York Times.
Posted by Arnie Herz on November 22, 2007
We all know people who address a problem by researching it from a hundred different angles. They learn about its origins, offshoots and all known and potential solutions.
But, once they’re armed with this arsenal of information, they freeze up; they can’t move from their place of intellectual understanding into action. Instead, they retreat under the guise of needing more input or a better strategy.
For several years, I’ve been following surveys and other reports on associate contentment and attrition. The wants and needs of associates have been scrutinized along gender, generational, economic and other lines.
Here’s a core sampling of some recent coverage on the subject:
The ABA Journal’s
What Associates Want offers a synopsis of a
Hildebrandt executive summary on associate satisfaction and morale (pdf).
The
Legal Times, via Law.com, outlines
Why Associates Bail Out of Law Firm Life and what firms can do to anticipate attrition and prepare for its impact
A bit of the bigger picture comes through this overview of a
survey on work/life balance and this take on an
employee engagement study.
Given the wealth of information available to law firm management and HR teams, the question remains: Are firms stuck in the information-mining process or are they acting on the data to benefit their current and future associates?
Posted by Arnie Herz on August 14, 2007
Torts. Mold. Waste. Lawyers are no strangers to the subject of toxicity. But, when we consider such noxious forces, it’s easy to overlook some of the most pervasive ones: the people we work with.
I’ve previously written about
difficult people in law firms and
organizational disrespect in the law. Seth Godin offers his take on the subject in companion posts on
toxic employees and
toxic bosses. In both, Godin highlights the role that leaders can play in fostering, controlling and remediating workplace toxins. He sums it up well when he states: “Because bosses are often able to define reality, at least for those in their sphere of influence, they can cause whole sections of an organization to go off the rails.”
If you think that complaining is the best way to deal with our toxic coworkers and firm leaders, think again. According to the
Chief Happiness Officer, our
complaints only make the workplace more toxic. That’s because complaining quickly goes viral, stems innovation and fuels bad relationships.
One possible antidote to this kind of toxicity is
positive leadership. Business coach and speaker
Anna Farmery highlights this point through a touching personal anecdote about
the value of recognition. She aptly conveys how genuinely recognizing people for their efforts and achievements increases positive energy and reduces negative energy in virtually any situation or environment.
For more insight into the dynamics of toxic law firms, you can check out Jean Lipman-Blumen's book,
The Allure of Toxic Leaders.
Posted by Arnie Herz on July 12, 2007
In a previous post about innovation and the legal profession, I said: “With the imminent wave of
Baby Boomer retirements, it’s time for law firms to innovate – to adapt their business environment, model and practices to meet the needs and demands of the young associates who support firm leaders today and who will (hopefully) become firm leaders in the future.”
My commentary there focused on innovating to benefit the youngest stratum of the law firm workforce. A very different perspective is offered in the current issue of
The Complete Lawyer (TCL), which focuses on the
graying of lawyers.
According to the issue’s lead in, a quarter of a million practicing lawyers in America are 55 or older and that number will triple in the next two decades. TCL’s contributors consider the implications of this shift from multiple vantage points. But a unifying message is that law firms can’t ignore the impact of this trend on their
business model (tip to Matt Homann), dynamic and culture.
While there are certain economic issues to consider, there are also some very pressing human (as in
humanity, not human resource) issues for firms – and the entire legal profession - to take on.
For more insight into innovation and the law, visit the
College of Law Practice Management’s website for an introduction to the just-announced
2007 InnovAction award winners.
Posted by Arnie Herz on July 6, 2007
Over the last few years, I’ve written quite a bit about the breakdown of the lawyer-client relationship and the resulting discontent and attrition. My coverage includes posts on:
The last post on this list refers to a business application of the
Broken Windows Theory. The theory holds that companies should place a premium on identifying and quickly repairing their broken windows – those aspects of their operation that signal an indifference to consumer satisfaction. By all reports, the law firm-client relationship window is
still broken.
For some time, blogger
Patrick Lamb has examined the law’s
Lake Wobegon Effect, which he describes as “the phenomenon by which law firms always overestimate the degree to which their clients are satisfied.” He updates his study in a post reporting the results of a
new General Counsel survey. According to Lamb, the survey shows that law firms continue to overrate their legal services and underestimate their clients’ dissatisfaction.
So, the question persists:
How can law firm’s fix their client service problems?
Like any pervasive issue, the first step is to lift the blinds and admit that something is wrong. That isn’t easy for service providers to do, as evidenced by this article titled
CEOs Think that Customer Service is Great (tip to
Bryan Eisenberg) and this one describing the
Top 10 Reasons Why Customer Service Fails. Unfortunately, the admission often comes only in the wake of a
major service lapse or
client departure.
Once the problem is out in the open, the next step is to cure it. Some law firms are indirectly appeasing disgruntled clients by switching to a
performance-based or
two-tier approach to associate compensation. Firms can also use an array of
client feedback programs to improve their services. But, as many observers point out, it’s difficult to create a service model that begets
client evangelists without consistently listening to your clients and sharing their feedback with the entire firm.
Over at
Legal Business Development, Jim Hassett offers lists of
34 questions for clients and prospects and
24 more questions for current clients. Together, they make a great starting point for firms looking to engage clients in an ongoing, candid dialogue about the state of their legal services
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 21, 2007
Most observers would agree that it makes sound business sense for law firms to establish strong and enduring relationships with the lawyers they hire
and the clients they serve. But, what happens when one of these relationships is forged at the other’s expense? This is the scenario
Gerry Riskin alludes to in a recent post titled
“Genius” minus “empathy” equals “stupidity."
In it, Riskin cites the fallout that occurs when General Counsel are left out of the conversation about rising associate salaries in the law firms they use. He also directs us to a related post on
Demand Destruction in which
Patrick Lamb reports on GC’s negative responses to survey questions about law firm associate pay. While the survey results can be framed in terms of economic forces and market impact, Lamb astutely points out that law firms making such unilateral salary decisions “are putting their client relationships at risk”
And, so, firms are faced with competing -- instead of symbiotic -- business relationships.
On the one hand, they need to attract and retain top talent. Money, although not the only draw, still woos the best and brightest through a firm’s front door (whether it keeps them there is
another story). On the other hand, a growing league of clients doesn’t want to foot the bill for law firm associate recruitment and retention initiatives.
It’s a conundrum.
Clients like the GC survey respondents have the choice to opt out and establish relationships with other (perhaps, smaller) firms or with alternative service providers like
Axiom Legal. Beyond cutting back on lawyer pay increases and partner profits, law firms might do some relationship damage control by following Riskin’s advice to directly and candidly communicate with clients about associate compensation and other important issues.
Postscript: I finished writing this post late last night. This morning,
law.com features a story about
Sun Microsystem’s decision to reduce the number of law firms it uses as outside counsel. Although the company wouldn’t discuss the basis for its cuts, its General Counsel did share that Sun’s business interest in cost-cutting is at odds with the law firm “race to meet New York associate salary standards."
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 12, 2007
Following up on my last post about
enhancing the lawyer-law firm relationship, I read Bruce MacEwen’s recent commentary that highlights the difference between merely
acknowledging relationship issues and
addressing them. In a post titled
“Our Lawyers Are Our Future:” But We Don’t Really Care, MacEwen writes that many firms declare their lawyers their most valuable assets, but few actually take steps to remedy problems like rampant associate attrition or the dearth of women partners.
Profiling the remedial action plan of one firm,
Simmons & Simmons, MacEwen concludes that economics and “cognitive dissonance” will eventually compel other firms to similarly experiment with
lawyer experience management.
Over at
The Adventure of Strategy, Rob Millard refers us to a post by
Nixon Peabody’s HR Director,
William Simpson, captioned
To make an Organization Great, First Make it a Great Place to Work. In it, Simpson details his firm’s ongoing, multi-pronged approach to optimizing the law firm-lawyer relationship. One of those prongs is examining “what drives employee satisfaction.” Among the satisfaction-drivers of Nixon Peabody’s lawyers are: meaningful work, recognition in the form of a timely and simple thank you, respect from management and communication.
This kind of dialogue about lawyer satisfaction can go a long way towards countering the dissatisfaction and defection that costs firms on many levels. As Rees Morrison states in this post about
lawyers’ perception of workload, it’s “the mind-numbing, commodity work that does not draw fully on the lawyer’s talents and professional interests that demoralize[s] them” and compels complaints.
Firms wishing to engage their lawyers in a candid conversation about satisfaction-drivers might benefit from using the newest version of
Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment. John Moore has a nice review of it at
Brand Autopsy. On the flip side, a Q & A piece featuring
Judge Carl Horn III will help lawyers refresh their recollection of what it means to
live a satisfying life in the law (thanks to
Susan Daicoff for the tip).
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 2, 2007
I regularly visit the topic of fostering change in the legal profession. Last week, I questioned whether law firms can change to meet the demands of the next generation of practitioners. I suggested that some firms will step up to that challenge, while others will turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the telltale signs that their business model needs updating.
Change (the kind that comes peacefully and without overthrow) can occur on a cultural level only if the change drivers are speaking up and the establishment is listening. There needs to be a welcomed, open and constructive dialogue as well as a willingness and capacity to change. When all these components converge, there’s a ripe opportunity for positive change. There may be resisters, but that’s par for the course of any major shift.
As my previous post on the subject conveyed, the incoming cohort of lawyers can identify the workplace changes it seeks. Accustomed to speaking their mind, these new lawyers are likely more than willing to talk to firm leaders about those changes. The open question is whether law firm leaders can and want to listen up; especially when the status quo is serving them extremely well (as blogger Carolyn Elefant highlights, over half of the Am Law 100 firms just reported that their average partner compensation exceeds $1million).
Some firms recognize that firms, clients and lawyers all benefit when junior associates regularly share their thought processes with senior attorneys. But, other firms do their best to perpetuate a culture of silence, as Bruce MacEwen details in a great post called Do You Know What Your Associates Think?
According to MacEwen, “abrupt, truculent, holier-than-Thou” and adversarial by nature, law firm leaders tend to create a widespread fear of speaking up in their firms. It’s difficult to change from such a fear-based culture to one “open or conducive to speaking up.” MacEwen surmises that the key change driver is leader behavior.
I agree that, ideally, leaders should be part of the change effort. But, they’re not essential change agents. As I’ve stated before, when the new generation of lawyers takes a stronger foothold in the profession, evolution will start disfavoring firms -- and law firm leaders -- that ignore their needs in favor of a culture of silence.
Posted by Arnie Herz on April 21, 2007
I’ve written a few posts describing lawyers as user-innovators -- the front-line (and, perhaps, most important) consumers, challengers and creators of their firm’s business culture. I’ve also posed the related inquiry: What would law firms look like if they considered their lawyers a potential community of user-innovators and actively nurtured that potential? What positive shifts in the firm’s environment, service model, and employee commitment and morale would result?
If we take in the data presented by objective observation, blogosphere dialogue and mainstream media coverage, it’s clear that our world and profession are experiencing clarion calls to change. The change drivers at the macro level take the form of environmental crises, global conflicts and widespread deprivations of human rights. On the micro level, there’s the emergent generation of people who are unwilling to devote years, let alone a lifetime, to meaningless work. Whether you label them Generation Y, The Millennials or Echo Boomers, this cohort of workers born in or after 1978 are coming to the service professions with expectations and values that challenge the status quo.
Some law firms respond to the call to change with a resounding: “Hey, this is what the law and law firm life is all about. If you’re looking for meaning and the easy road through, here’s the door. Leave the firm, leave the law, it’s up to you, but we’re not changing.” Other firms, however, see that their business model needs updating to meet the changing needs of present and future lawyers. They understand that the problems they’re having with retention, attrition and succession are harbingers of a growing misfit between the firm’s environment and the people that inhabit it.
Change is an inevitable part of life. Sometimes we refuse to do it until we’re sufficiently jolted by an event or experience that leaves us with no other choice. After meeting and talking to Harvard law students last week, I’m more convinced than ever that the time is ripe for law schools and law firms to welcome and engage the conversation about changes they need to make to sustain the legal profession into the future. There are plenty of current and pending lawyers who are ready, willing and able to share their ideas and insights on the issue.
Since I’m being asked to develop and present more programs for law students and young practitioners, I’ve gathered a list of articles and commentary on the next generation of lawyers and what they’re seeking in the workplace. Feel free to share your thoughts after you look through them:
Gen Y Lawyers on Career/Life Balance
Gen Y Lawyers Shunning Big Law
The Gen Y Equation
The Young and the Restless
You Say You Want a Big-Law Revolution
Who Says Being a Lawyer Has to Suck?
Re-Designing the Career Ladder
Call Them Gen Y or Millennials: They Deserve Our Attention
Making Work Work for Gen Y
Bridging the Generational Divide
One of the most interesting and telling perspectives comes from Brazen Careerist contributor Ryan Healy. In a post for the blog’s Twentysomething feature titled I’m in 17th Grade, he describes how he’s come to see the first years of business life as a learning lab. He captures it best when he writes: “I try to learn something from everything I do. This so-called 17th grade is just what it sounds like – an educational opportunity for me to master before I graduate to the next phase of my life or the next “grade.” What that grade will be, I have no idea, but I hope to figure it out while I’m here.”
Posted by Arnie Herz on April 15, 2007
In preparing for an upcoming Harvard Law School program, I was reminded that today’s students are much more discerning consumers of information and ideas than they were back in my day. They take nothing at face value. And, thanks to the era of instant gratification, you must be prepared to capture their attention in just a few sound bites. If you don’t capture it, or if you otherwise fail to meet their consumer needs and expectations, they’ll check out on you, figuratively and, often, literally.
Although I enjoy engaging the energy brought by this new generation of lawyers, my guess is that it will present big issues for law firms built on a be quiet and pay your dues model of employee retention. I’ve previously discussed how the pay more, bleed more approach to law firm management and sustainability is flawed because fewer and fewer incoming lawyers will be willing to sacrifice the quality of their present lives for the possibility of a future partnership (especially when they can so readily see the personal toll that the partnership track takes on many firm leaders).
Penelope Trunk echoes this point in a post called Paying dues is so old school. She writes that, while people in leadership positions think that it’s important, “[p]aying one’s due is an antiquated idea in a workplace where few people aspire to climb the same corporate ladder for 45 [or, as in the law, even eight or nine] years. There’s simply no incentive to stick around and toil away in the hopes of one day attaining a life that seems rather lifeless.
Just as the up-and-coming generation of lawyers will likely shun dues paying as a viable business tenet, they’ll also refuse to tolerate any jerks they encounter in their law firms. Back in October, I wrote about Robert Sutton’s much-discussed book, The No Asshole Rule. Bruce MacEwen continues the conversation with a terrific post called The Care & Feeding of 800 Pound Gorillas. In it, he points out that, to date, the legal profession has largely tolerated “the jerks and a**holes in our firms” despite the morale sapped, loyalty eroded and careers derailed as a direct result. He also aptly notes that, while being a jerk may be contagious, each of us has the power and opportunity to stem the spread of this disease.
I agree with MacEwen. And I venture that, as the new generation of lawyers takes its foothold in the profession, the jerks and worse among us – and the firms that harbor them - will find themselves losing out due to natural selection.
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 30, 2007
If you regularly stop by here, you’ve likely noticed that I devote a lot of blog posts and other professional space to exploring the topic of human energy and how it factors into our ability to create successful business relationships and avoid unsuccessful ones. This is much more than an academic interest for me.
For close to 25 years, I’ve tried my best to keep good company; that is, to surround myself as much as possible with positive people as opposed to negative people who drain the heck out of me. In any situation, I’m vigilant of the energetic influences around me and monitor whether I’m experiencing them as filling or draining. Of course, as a practicing lawyer and mediator, steering clear of negativity has been a big challenge. And I’ve noticed that, where negative people and positive people co-mingle, the negative energy usually ends up trumping and stifling the positive to a large extent.
Given my interest and observations about negativity and positivity, I was captivated by a terrific post from Chief Happiness Officer Alexander Kjerulf on happiness and workplace productivity. Starting with the premise that “happiness at work is the #1 productivity booster,” Kjerulf shares 10 reasons why this is the case. Topping the list is this point:
Happy people are a lot more fun to be around and consequently have better relations at work. This translates into:
• Better teamwork with your colleagues
• Better employee relations if you’re a manager
• More satisfied customers if you’re in a service job
• Improved sales if you’re a sales person
In making the case for the happiness-productivity connection, Kjerulf (who, by the way, has a book on the topic called Happy Hour is 9 to 5 that you can buy or read online for free) points us to a related post by one of my favorite bloggers, Kathy Sierra. Hopping over to her space, I read her take on how Angry/negative people can be bad for your brain.
In it, Sierra provides scientific backing – neuroscience, to be exact – for the finding that negativity tends to be contagious. Specifically, she writes, due to the phenomenon of emotional contagion, “negative emotions exert a more powerful effect in social situations than positive ones.” That’s why a generally happy and upbeat person will likely become depressed or angry when hanging out with someone who’s depressed or angry. According to a source Sierra quotes, the converse is also true: If we’re around someone who’s self-confident and buoyant long enough, we’re likely to feel good about ourselves.
For more on the impact of negativity around us, tune in to Anna Farmery’s podcast on Managing Negativity at Work. For more on the intersection of neuroscience and business, check out the archived posts at Stephanie West Allen’s idealawg. West Allen has also written a couple of recent posts on two of my favorite subjects to cover at legal sanity: energy and self-esteem at work.
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 4, 2007
In a post called
Lawyer unhappiness: Chicken Little at law, Stephanie West Allen highlights Robert Ambrogi’s recent reference to a chain of commentary about
scholarly work on the subject of lawyer happiness. The chain backtracks from West Allen to Ambrogi to Jeff Lipshaw at the
Legal Profession Blog to John Steele from the
Legal Ethics Forum.
I enjoyed reading about the studies (and the bloggers’ perspectives on them) and wasn’t surprised to learn that they’ve yielded some inconsistent conclusions.
Over the years, I've discussed the topic of
lawyer happiness and unhappiness from many different angles at
legal sanity. If you want to conduct a study on satisfied lawyers, you'll find enough of them to gather data on. If you want to study lawyer discontent, you'll find plenty of empirical fodder for your consideration.
To add a different perspective, practitioners (especially newly-minted ones), law firm leaders, law students and their educators would benefit from a new study delineating the specific factors and forces (such as meaning, money, employee engagement initiatives, leadership, client interaction, and flex-time work options) that make or break lawyer happiness today.
Posted by Arnie Herz on January 22, 2007
I’ve devoted quite a bit of blog space to discussing how lawyers can optimize their business relationships. As I’ve repeatedly observed, success in the law largely turns on the quality of our work relationships. When our client connections are impaired, we experience the fallout in the form of client discontent and defection and our own unhappiness and depletion.
A group of articles I recently gathered together for an upcoming program on Relationships for Business Success (PDF) got me thinking about the modern-day version of human-to-human connection and how it impacts lawyers endeavoring to build and sustain business.
Cultivating successful client relationships requires a kind of intimacy – a willingness to get to know the human being behind the legal issue or need that comes across our desk. It’s basically the same kind of intimacy that fuels healthy connections to family and friends. But, according to some observers, the tools that many of us have come to depend on for everyday connectivity may be compromising our capacity for intimacy.
In a Forbes.com article on PDAs (as in personal digital assistants) and intimate relationships, one expert describes this kind of wireless technology as “the modern-day equivalent to the spinster chaperone.” Although they appear to boost relationships by providing users access to one another 24/7, the kind of interactions PDAs facilitate are generally quick and impersonal. As these “nanosecond communications” become the norm for us, we expect “instant relationships as well as all other kinds of instant gratification.”
If we lift our eyes from the BlackBerry screen for a minute or two, it becomes very clear that this expectation doesn’t play out well in the real world of human connection.
This WSJ.com article on BlackBerry Orphans recently made the rounds among my friends and family. While some of the quotes from kids dealing with PDA-obsessed parents are funny, the sentiments behind the words are powerful and hard to ignore (and I speak from personal experience here). These kids are expressing a real need for attention – they want to be more visible to their parents. But, at many points throughout the day, they’re largely invisible because their parents have exchanged intimacy for constant connectivity.
Posted by Arnie Herz on December 5, 2006
In my last post on the new law firm environmentalists, I mentioned research findings that burnout within a business or organization really reflects more on the employer than the employee. Picking up on this idea is a recent Knowledge at Wharton article discussing how Lack of Organizational Respect Fuels Employee Burnout [thanks to Susan Abbott for the tip].
According to the piece, respect is critical to inducing or avoiding burnout because it fuels employee engagement in the workplace. Respect gives people the conviction that what they’re doing is important and meaningful. Conversely, when employees experience disrespect directly or vicariously through coworkers, they conclude that the company doesn’t care about its workers and demoralization follows.
Law firms experiencing the fallout from employee burnout need to examine their culture of respect. If it’s lacking – with disrespect being the prevailing cultural norm --- they’d be well-advised to embrace the leadership advice contained in an article offering Five Steps to Engaging Your Employees [flagged by George Ambler and the folks at Be Excellent].
In it, respected business advisor Ram Charan points out these self-evident truths: A “leader who creates the right ambiance and kindles the fire in people gets that extra something that drives organizations to new heights. [ ] Great leaders understand the numbers, but they also touch people's hearts.”
Posted by Arnie Herz on November 29, 2006
Lawyer burnout is a topic I’ve repeatedly covered here from various angles. We all know that this kind of career-fueled depletion is not exclusive to the practice of law. It occurs across a range of professions and industries. But, the hard truth is that lawyer burnout is so pervasive that it’s become the functional equivalent of an environmental hazard – law firms will not be able to sustain themselves if they don’t do something to cap and abate the rampant lawyer depletion in their ranks.
Knowing that this is a subject of great interest to me, my friend and fellow lawyer
David Abeshouse directed me to a
New York Magazine issue focused on
the science of burnout. In an excellent cover story titled
Can’t Get No Satisfaction, Jennifer Senior chronicles the evolving study of career burnout, from its roots in the “caring professions” of the 1970s to its affliction of the best and brightest in today’s buttoned-up corporate culture.
One of the most interesting points the article makes is that we’re often told that each of us – as an individual – is responsible for monitoring and dealing with our own burnout. Yet, researchers have found that this push to self-help misses the mark because burnout within a business or organization really “says more about the employer than it does about the employee.” So, it makes sense that new burnout studies are focusing on workplace environmental factors that cause and alleviate this kind of employee depletion.
Interestingly, the piece highlights this factoid concerning the legal profession: “Of the 75 law firms surveyed in New York in The American Lawyer’s recent survey of mid-level associates, the firms ranked No. 1 (Dickstein Shapiro) and No. 3 (Patterson Belknap) had one thing in common: They both received perfect scores on their attitudes toward pro bono work.”
Posted by Arnie Herz on November 11, 2006
In a very candid and provocative post,
David Maister asks
Are We Too Negative? This query stems from Maister’s observation that many blogs, including his own, focus on people’s flaws. Specifically, he notes:
“When you go visit other blogs, you see lots of criticism, complaints, cynicism and skepticism. You only see a very little praise and celebration of successes, triumphs and things done right. For every blog post or comment illustrating excellence, creativity, trustworthiness or professionalism, there are multiples bemoaning the lack of these things.”
The post has elicited a lengthy comment thread that’s well worth a read. What occurs to me after considering the commentary is that there’s really no point in being negative and self-flagellating about all this negativity. Rather, just calling it out is a positive step because it opens the door to a much-needed dialogue on what’s ailing the legal profession.
Like the larger culture, our profession is plagued by
rampant pessimism that’s reinforced by heavy doses of bad news delivered daily by media outlets and firm leaders. Through my
training and development work, I’ve come to see how this unhealthy diet of negativity has left many practitioners depleted and hungering for positive filling. They’re
searching for some meaning at work and beyond.
This drive to redress negativity with an infusion of meaning and filling has deep roots. It’s the focus of famed psychiatrist
Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy, “which identifies the search for a meaning in life as the primary motivational force in human beings." It’s also addressed by the field of
Positive Organizational Scholarship. And, at the law firm level, the need to avoid depletion and gain positive energy is reflected in the rise of
employee engagement initiatives.
Posted by Arnie Herz on November 4, 2006
Since posting about
women in the law yesterday, I ran across a
FC Now blog post addressing
How Working Mothers Find Work/Life balance. It poses this provocative question:
“can a woman work hard enough to succeed in her career without coming across as a negligent mother?”
The post refers to a Novemebr 1, 2006
New York Times piece titled
Working Mothers Find Some Peace on the Road. Among many other points of interest, that article offers the following observation: “as hard as it can be to balance the demands of business trips and family life, for the relatively small group of employed mothers who travel, it [solo business travel] can be delicious.”
Posted by Arnie Herz on November 3, 2006
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a roundup of sources addressing the legal profession’s gender gap. This post made for an interesting companion piece to my prior commentary on the feasibility of flex-time work in the law.
The more I speak with women lawyers participating in my Legal Sanity Learning Programs, the more convinced I am that firms are missing out on opportunities to listen to, engage and empower this vital population.
The cyber space is home to a vibrant and very candid conversation about the struggles and triumphs of women in the law and the larger workforce. What follows is just a sampling of the online dialogue that’s been generated in the short time since my last post on the subject.
Over at Amazing Firms Amazing Practices, Gerry Riskin points to a recent survey (pdf) confirming that women are under-represented in the top tiers of our profession and play a less extensive role in law firm governance. The survey also found evidence of a compensation gap between female equity partners and their male counterparts. An article featured at law.com augments this discussion by sharing what several women lawyers had to say about the survey and its implications.
Lending a slightly different perspective to the topic is another law.com piece asserting that Women Hold the Keys to Their Success. It opens with this very upbeat assertion: “The keys to success are to create a supportive environment that allows time to focus on what has to be done and how it can be done best: to nurture relationships, build a team to support the endeavor and enjoy.” As the above survey connotes, however, the task of creating a truly “supportive environment” for women within a law firm culture may be a much more formidable challenge than this well-meaning article lets on.
Lawjobs.com also weighs in on the conversation with a very interesting article on law firm efforts to rehire alumni. A “dearth of minority and women attorneys in the upper echelon of big firms” is among the reasons cited for the rise in alumni programs aimed at “bringing back attorneys who leave for perceived greener pastures.”
Placing the subject in broader context is a csmonitor.com piece offering The truth behind women ‘opting out.' The coverage concerns two reports citing “a weak labor market and inflexible work policies as the main reasons women are staying home.” Some additional insight is provided by a CareerJournal.com article in which executive coaches offer tips on Grooming Women for the Top.
Posted by Arnie Herz on October 31, 2006
All of us in the law have dealt with difficult coworkers. The resulting drain on our personal energy stores can be immense. The deep holes that spates of difficult people punch in a law firm’s culture often go ignored and unfilled. In the wake of this inaction, firms lose lawyers, clients and business repute.
John Moore at Brand Autopsy sent me on a blog-a-thon of sorts with a clever post on this theme. Titled the The No Asshole Rule, the post refers to the soon-coming book by the same name in which author Robert Sutton discusses the business damage that difficult people wreak.
From Moore’s commentary, I headed over to Guy Kawasaki’s blog for his great review of Sutton’s book. I then took in a May 2004 article by Sutton called Nasty People. From there, it was on to David Maister who adds his perspective on the subject by asking us all to consider times when we might have taken the plunge and acted like the proverbial hole in the doughnut.
This ride around the Web naturally ends right here at home. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a regular contributor to an online help site called Office-Politics, which just underwent a sweet redesign. You’ll find lots of good information and insight there on navigating the toxic workplace.
Posted by Arnie Herz on October 19, 2006
Some time back, I wrote about an ongoing cyber dialogue on gender gap issues in the law fueled by a New York Times article questioning Why Do So Few Women Reach the Top of Big Law Firms? That article featured the opinion and work of Lauren Stiller Rikleen, a law firm partner and author of the book Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law.
I recently met Rikleen when we presented programs at the same ALM conference. She was gracious enough to forward me a copy of her book and I just started reading it. Even at first blush, it’s fair to say that Rikleen offers fresh, thorough and well-written commentary on a subject that’s critical to the future of our profession.
If you want some additional insight into Rikleen’s research and findings, she’s interviewed and otherwise profiled in the Spring 2006 issue of the Women Lawyers Journal (pdf).
Providing some more food for thought on this front is a washingtonpost.com piece called Working Mom Top Fears. It conveys some telling information culled from a recent AFL-CIO Ask A Working Woman survey (pdf). The steps companies are taking to prevent or allay such fears are set out in a CareerJournal.com article on The Mommy Drain. Completing this roundup is lawyer Karen Asner’s incisive take on Creating Win-Win Flexible Work Arrangements.
Posted by Arnie Herz on October 11, 2006
My 5-year-old son is a mega fan of the
Transformers toys and television show. For all of you in the dark about these “robots in disguise,” you’ll find a nice overview
here. These aren’t your standard-issue machines fighting the ultimate battle of good vs. evil. They’re “more than meets the eye” in many ways. Primarily, they stand out because they experience and project the full gamut of human emotions – they’re passionate and dedicated warriors who think and feel deeply. A fusion of the robust and robotic gives these characters their mass appeal.
Blogger Kathy Sierra of
Creating Passionate Users picks up and runs with the
robotic-robust theme in a post called
Knocking the exuberance out of employees. In it, she questions why some companies pursue a mode of management that kills off employee energy and excitement (along with their “desire to learn, grow, adapt, innovate, and care") and breeds automatons.
Sierra comes up with a brilliant, 16-point list of reasons why many managers believe that “Robots Are the Best Employees.” I won’t reiterate the whole roster. But here’s a snapshot of its contents. Managers prefer robots because robots (as opposed to robust humans): “have no strongly-held opinions; have no passion, so they have nothing to "fight" for; are always willing to do whatever it takes (insane hours, etc.); never make the boss look bad (e.g. stupid, incompetent, clueless, etc.); and don't need ‘personal’ days ... because they don't have a personal life.”
Firms recognizing the dangers inherent in fostering mechanical employees can look to the wisdom that
John Moore shares in a recent post on
Aligning the Employee Experience with the Customer Experience. Drawing from his book,
Tribal Knowledge, Moore states that “creating meaningful employee experiences revolves around making the company something employees can believe in.” He goes on to posit that the best
companies (you can sub in
law firms) “realize that happy, knowledgeable employees will usually translate into happy, knowledgeable customers.”
Those of us wishing to proactively avoid robotic employment will benefit from the guidance
Jim Citrin offers in an article compelling us to
consider the fit of any job we apply for. Towards the end of the piece, Citirn identifies the underpinnings of job contentment as an “environment of trust, a person or people with whom you enjoy spending time, feeling at home in the workplace, [and] relationships that nourish you.”
Posted by Arnie Herz on September 28, 2006
About a year ago, I took a business and personal empowerment course that - among other significant lessons – taught me how to take action in the face of uncertainty, fear and negativity. One of the course mottos that I’ve embraced as my own is “ready, fire, aim.” It’s my reminder that the changes I seek in my business only happen when I stop pondering and talking about them, and start acting on my ideas and intuition.
The notion that action speaks louder than words is embedded in a thoughtful post by Thom Singer called Thinking Too Much ??? In it, he recounts how one lawyer he knew invested so much time and energy in weighing the details of a marketing plan that “he spent no time doing.” A similar cautionary message runs through a lawfirmblogging.com post titled Don’t Argue Over Where To Put The Unicorns. It relates what happens when we become so fixated on the possible results and implications of a project that – “dwelling on what could possibly, remotely, maybe, potentially happen” – we become frozen in our tracks.
Considering the same subject from a slightly different angle is a Brains on Fire post about Control Issues. Although many business people crave control and believe they have it, the post notes, control is just an illusion. An illusion and obsession that keeps us from seizing opportunities for real business progress. To lift this veil and embrace reality, we’re given this no-nonsense instruction: “quit thinking about it. Talking about it. Having meetings about meetings about. Or pretending to do it when you aren’t acutally [sic] doing it. Just freakin’ do it.”
For many lawyers, the task of getting unstuck and taking action is easier to accomplish with the help of a mentor or other trusted advisor. This is a point I covered in a recent post on positive law firm leadership. You’ll find David Maister’s recap of, and commentary on, that post among others he’s culled for a very insightful Blawg Review #76.
Posted by Arnie Herz on September 1, 2006
A New York Times editorial on The Rise of Pessimism in our country caught my attention because it echoes much of the statistics and understanding lawyer life coach Ellen Ostrow shares in an informative and comprehensive interview she gives in The Complete Lawyer (hat tip to Stephanie West Allen of idealawg).
Addressing whether lawyers are healthy, Ostrow cites study findings that “the most successful law students were the most pessimistic. And it’s the most successful law students who are going into the big firms.” She goes on to link profession-wide pessimism to “depression, poorer health and shorter lifespan.” On the flip side, Ostrow contends that lawyers can counter their pessimistic tendencies, and the related side effects, through learned optimism.
This education ideally takes place on both the individual and institutional levels. We can up optimism for ourselves by carving out some “sacred time” each day to “maintain strong, supportive relationships with others, do work that engages [our] strengths and has significance beyond [our] income." Law firms can also counter pessimism in their midst through employee engagement initiatives that “give lawyers the greatest possible latitude to decide how, where & when work gets done.”
Also instructive on this last point is a Gallup Management Journal piece on The Impact of Positive Leadership [flagged at The Practice of Leadership blog]. It discusses the influence of "positive-to-negative interaction ratios (PNR) in our work [ ] life.” Research has found that “work teams with a PNR greater than 3:1 were significantly more productive than workgroups that did not reach this ratio.” The article goes on to highlight what leaders can do to raise workplace PNR through an infusion of positive emotions.
To jumpstart our focus on the bright side of life in the law, blogger Stephanie West Allen and consultant Don Hutcheson of the Complete Lawyer have teamed to survey our views on What’s Right About The Profession Of Law?
Posted by Arnie Herz on August 4, 2006
Dick Richards of Come Gather Round has a great set of posts on the nexus between distress and change. In the initial commentary, Richards writes that distress is a prerequisite to any change in our lives. So, he concludes, “if you manage others and they need to change, don’t shield them from distress. If friends or family members need to change, don’t shield them from distress.”
In a follow-up post, Richards tells us how his theory played out for one minor league catcher with major league dreams. When an interested big league team passed on him, the player asked the team’s General Manager why he lost out. Instead of shielding him from the harsh reality, the manager explained exactly why the man would never be a major leaguer. Although this was an incredible blow, the man was later grateful for the opportunity it afforded him to change course and move on to a successful career in business.
Like Richards, I’ve always believed that some of the most positive changes we make in our lives derive from difficult times and situations that cause us pain, anxiety and uncertainty. This is actually good news for the legal profession, which is suffering from the collective distress and discontent of many lawyers. We seem to be reaching that critical point in this ailing business trajectory when resistance to change is ebbing and firms and professional associations are looking for ways to optimize our lives in the law.
In my Web wanderings today, I saw that Rob Millard of The Adventure of Strategy blog has also picked up on Richards’ post, applying its core message to the change process in professional service firms. In giving his take on the subject, Millard states that “an appropriate degree of distress is a critical ingredient for overcoming resistance to change.” He also sets out a very handy formula to back his position.
Posted by Arnie Herz on July 10, 2006
Several months back, a
New York Times article spurred a great deal of discussion and commentary on
biglaw’s missing women and
the legal profession’s gender gap.
The discussion continues with this new
Small Firm Business article in which
White & Case administrative partner
Karen Asner shares her take on
Where the Women Are in the law. Asner cites the statistic that, starting “in the fourth or fifth year, women depart law firms in greater numbers than men, leaving fewer of them in the partnership pool.” While women’s struggle with work-family obligations does spur this exodus, according to Asner, it’s not the primary reason behind it. Instead, she says, “the biggest reason women lawyers leave a firm is because they are dissatisfied with work itself or feel stalled in their careers.”
Assessing the origins of this dissatisfaction, Asner points out that many female lawyers feel that their work doesn’t support their career goals of “helping others” and promoting the “greater good.” Being less inclined to tout their individual accomplishments, women are also “less likely to be singled out for exciting, cutting-edge assignments” that often lead to firm-wide recognition and partnership promotion. Asner goes on to address strategies law firm’s can pursue to increase the number of women partners, including: “business development, alumni relations, peer support, networking and career development” initiatives.
After finishing my initial draft of this post, I saw that blogger Carolyn Elefant adds an interesting coda to Asner’s perspective in a
Legal Bog Watch post titled
Where the Women Aren’t. In it, Elefant relays ideas on why there are relatively few female Supreme Court clerks.
In addition to the above offerings, some terrific guidance channels through a new contribution to
Change This called
The Working Mother’s Manifesto: This is How We Do It (pdf). Written by
Carol Evans - the CEO and president of
Working Mother Magazine - the manifesto offers invaluable insight into challenges and triumphs commonly experienced by the 26 million mothers in today’s full and part-time workforce. Evans closes the piece with this remark about working mothers: “even though people ask us over and over ‘How do you do it all?’ the more interesting question is, ‘why do you do it all?’ We do it all because we want to live full lives.”
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 29, 2006
My posts on lawyer experience management, nurturing the partner-associate business relationship, winning the hearts and minds of lawyers, and the economics of lawyer depletion have generated some interesting offline discussions on the root causes of lawyer defection from one firm to another.
While some believe that a desire for more money, status and autonomy remains the primary motivator, others think that many of today’s practitioner-defectors leave firms first and foremost to claim greater professional camaraderie and meaning. In my experience as a coach and consultant to lawyers, I’ve heard more and more practitioners express a willingness to sacrifice prestige and pay for fit and connection. As I’ve said before: High pay and big name clients might get law schools’ best and brightest through a firm’s door; but in the emerging age of the dual-centric worker, big money alone likely won’t keep many of them toiling there year after year after year.
Of course, there are lawyers who thrive in a pay-your-dues firm atmosphere where there’s scant positive feedback and mentoring, no sure prospect of making partner, little to no work-life synergy and tough competition for plum assignments [a business culture David Maister profiles in a terrific post called The End of Apprenticeship]. The legal profession would be in shambles if this wasn’t the case. As a recent CareerJournal.com article suggests, there will always be newly-minted and more seasoned lawyers willing to log long hours in a bid to get (and stay) ahead.
But firms trying to stem the tide of attrition within their ranks have to be candid enough to admit that there’s probably something beyond money, status and autonomy that the fleeing lawyers are seeking in those greener pastures. They must be willing to devote time, energy and other resources to ascertaining what their incoming and remaining lawyers really need to feel connected to the firm in healthy mind, spirit and body. And, once they have a handle on those lawyer needs, firms will have to decide whether or not they’re willing and able to take steps to meet them.
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 23, 2006
A couple of months ago, I looked at the economics of lawyer depletion. The subject recently resurfaced in a post at Bruce MacEwen’s Adam Smith, Esq. discussing sustainability and the law firm business model. Reflecting on that paradigm’s inherent weaknesses, MacEwen states: “it's a structural difficulty created by client expectations for responsiveness, combined with the ineluctable financial arithmetic of the billable hour, colliding with women's prime biological and sociocultural child-bearing years, and with everyone's desire that life consist of more than the four walls of the office.”
Responding to MacEwen’s post, blogger Rob Millard of The Adventure of Strategy offered up some possible law firm solutions to the problem of “overworked and overstressed associates,” including: accepting lower per partner profits; instituting a staggered compensation system; and leveraging technology so that lawyers can work from home some of the time. Millard winds down his commentary by observing: “It’s all very well to have swimming pools, concierge services and restaurants to support those that are willing to sacrifice all for their careers. But excluding those that seek a balance is depriving the firms of potentially valuable capacity at a time when good corporate lawyers are in desperately short supply.”
Lending a broader cultural context to MacEwen’s and Millard’s observations is a flurry new posts and articles on the American phenomenon of forfeiting accrued vacation time. I’ve previously discussed Americans’ work-life identity crisis and the problem of over-work in America (pdf).
Adding to this foundation of information is a BostonWorks.com article, titled Time off is a gift; it would be rude not use it, and a related post from the Job blog. Both consider why we tend to live to work in this country and the fallout from doing so.
The discussion continues in a Time.com essay called Just Sit Back and Relax! and in a piece from CSMonitor.com on corporate efforts to counter employees’ all-work-and-no-play mindset. Notably, the latter article points out that the law is one field in which these new quality-of-life efforts have yet to get a foothold.
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 30, 2006
I’ve previously discussed the importance of inspiring law firm associates to become law firm evangelists. I’ve also suggested that this transformation can be accomplished in part via employee engagement initiatives like mentoring and coaching.
While these engagement initiatives can do a lot to foster a sense of passion and purpose in the associate workforce, they’re bound to fall way short unless the firm’s partners/leaders are equally invested in the change effort – an effort that, in most instances, will require them to reinvent the typical partner-associate business relationship.
This kind of top down investment in law firm sustainability seems like a no-brainer; especially in light of recent stats on the high rate of associate attrition. Yet, a post by Tom Collins at the morepartnerincome blog titled Why Law Partners Hoard Work suggests that it may very well be a tough sell.
Referring to a current survey of midsize law firms, Collins reports that partners are not sharing the workload – or their knowledge and guidance - with associates. Instead of delegating, “mentoring talent” and “training others,” they’re hoarding work because their distribution is largely keyed to their “individual production.” Collins asserts that this status quo will only change if midsize firms “rethink partner compensation” and embrace personal production as just one of several determining factors.
David Maister offers us another spin on the hoarding partner problem Collins highlights. In a post called Don’t Compromise – Take Turns, Maister shares that a key to any great business relationship is mutual give and take. He says: “Employees know that most of the time, the organization is going to be run for the benefit of the owners and the bosses. But if occasionally, just occasionally, the employees needs become front and center and receive true attention, the commitment to the relationship is strengthened.”
Maister and Collins offer some great insight into reapproaching and nurturing the associate-partner business relationship. The subject of reinvention is also under discussion at Rosa Say’s blog, Talking Story. Say and her Ho’ohana Community are hosting a forum on Reinventions at Work and in Business. Their insightful posts offer up some good food for thought on employee evangelism, leadership, work creativity and more.
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 19, 2006
Some time ago, I commented on Thane Rosenbaum’s book The Myth of Moral Justice. In my review, I focused on his perception of the legal profession as devoid of morality and his concomitant call for lawyers to once again regard themselves as members of a healing profession.
A very interesting aspect of the book that I didn’t highlight, however, is Rosenbaum’s belief that the key to the law’s much-needed morality boost is the proverbial day in court. Only at trial, he asserts, do people have a real opportunity to share their stories of hurt, grief, disappointment and other injury. It’s this storytelling – this chance to speak up and be heard - that promotes the healing that the law and lawyers are meant to facilitate.
A nice companion piece to Rosenbaum’s theory is this recent mediate.com article on The Satisfactions of Litigation. In it, lawyer and ADR professional Charles Parselle states that "very good reasons exist why people routinely prefer the litigation system rather than alternative dispute resolution systems." They see the courts as optimum forums for gaining vindication, a sense of empowerment and "a stamp of legitimacy." As Rosenbaum does, Parselle likens courtrooms to "the public square, the place where citizens gather to be heard and to vent."
Giving visual and other support for the courthouse as public square analogy is a recent, photo-captioned New York Times article titled State to Pay Woman Injured by a Flying Beach Umbrella [tipped by WSJ.com’s Law Blog]. The photo depicts the injured woman and her attorney, courthouse in background, standing under a replica of the large beach umbrella that flew up from its mooring and struck her forehead. In the piece, the lawyer says that he and his client intended the display to send this cautionary message: "Summer's coming. [ ] Believe it or not, beach umbrellas like this can be a real hazard to your health."
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 17, 2006
Yesterday, my wife made a late-night run to one of our local big name supermarkets. As she approached the checkout area, she saw a line of about a dozen people waiting for the sole cashier on duty. Noticing the store manager, my wife politely asked if another cashier could open up. He looked at her and gruffly responded that someone was coming out, but that people should expect to wait when they shop so late at night.
Being the shrinking violet that she is (not), my wife pointed out that the store is open until midnight and prominently displays a sign saying “we’re open late for your shopping convenience.” She also told the manager to remember that there are other late-night supermarkets in town and that his words actually impact way more than the dozen or so individuals consuming them in that moment.
To be sure, my wife’s experience last night – which she’s since shared with a number of local friends and acquaintances - was far from unique. We’ve all been on the receiving end of poor customer service. But, it does point up the potential dangers of treating client connections as ephemeral transactions rather than lasting relationships. It also highlights the fallout – in the form of negative word-of-mouth - that can come from sending mixed messages about our willingness and ability to serve our clients.
Most of us can see how we shoot ourselves in the foot when we regularly overpromise and underdeliver in our client dealings. We understand that we damage or ruin our relationship with the client and lose them as a referral source.
But what’s not always so clear to us is that, much of the time, our failure to meet client expectations derives from our own lack of authenticity. We’re simply not honest with ourselves about the work we’re adept at and passionate about, the deadlines we can reasonably meet and our desire to be available to clients. If we aren't coming clean to ourselves about our strengths and weaknesses, boundaries and sincere interests then, chances are, we’re treating our clients to the same deception.
As a timeless post from What’s Your Brand Mantra so aptly relates, we need to "be the change we want to see."
Perhaps, then, my wife would have fared better if the supermarket had posted this sign last night: "We're open until midnight, but we can't provide you with fast and efficient checkout or plentiful and affable employees after 9pm.
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 11, 2006
I came across a trio of articles that shed some light on what’s fueling the lawyer burnout and lawyer attrition that’s prevalent in our profession today.
In Lawyers and the Success Trap, we’re told that that achieving in the law can be a double-edged sword. Lawyers typically succeed by devoting themselves to “a particular specialty or focused area of the practice.” This takes many years of intense effort. The lawyer’s dilemma, the piece asserts, is that we end up jettisoning our own fulfillment as we navigate the terrain of job expertise toward our ultimate goal of success.
A second article, titled Problematic Perfectionism, illustrates another aspect of the lawyer’s dilemma. Opening with the assertion that the legal world still requires (and rewards) a mindset of perfectionism, the piece explores the price we pay for our “quest for a flawless existence.” Innovation is one of the identified victims of the quest since our drive to be perfect keeps us from “jumping in and trying new things” and “being creative.” Some think that we should choose to innovate rather than perfect. But others suggest that, if we can’t stand the fire (of perfectionism), we should get out of the legal profession.
Offering yet another perspective on what’s ailing lawyers today is a CareerJounal.com article discussing why Life-Firm Life Doesn’t Suit Some Young Associates. It quotes one expert’s finding that attrition among big firm associates is at an all-time high. Their departure results from a coalescence of factors. Because the road to partnership is “long and arduous” and partners “are working harder than ever,” many associates think that big firm rewards simply aren’t worth the personal sacrifice. Their perspective is fueled by a generational attitude about the importance of having a life and “contributing to the greater good.”
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 5, 2006
Last year, I wrote a post about
reforming the typical law school curriculum. I stated: “As law students, we learn how to translate human relations into rules, rights and responsibilities – the three “rs” of legal education. As a result, we’re well-versed in transforming complex situations into a dry set of facts and applicable laws. But, we gain little to no insight into meeting the needs of
the people behind the legal matters we take on. Law schools will go a long way towards fostering happier lawyers and a healthier profession if they recognize and teach the human relations skills that are so vital to optimal lawyering.”
In a recent post titled
The Person Behind The Mask, David Maister similarly reflects on the importance of separating the humans from the roles they play out in our daily interactions. He observes that our success in business and life largely turns on our ability to “access the human beings behind the mask” in a way that elicits and engages their “true wishes, desires and concerns.”
Maister’s words and my own observations about this human-to-human skill set resonated loud and clear as I read a
csmonitor.com article discussing why some
professors are banning laptops from classrooms. The piece opens with the perspective of
University of Michigan law professor Don Herzog, who shares his findings that at “any given moment in a law school class, literally 85 to 90 percent” of the students were online shopping or reading the news. As I took in Herzog’s and others’ laments about this problem of “continuous partial attention,” I wondered whether laptop use was really to blame for the students’ disengagement from the lesson of the day.
If the professors really engaged the people behind the students in front of them – if they took the time to create a curriculum that met their true wishes, desires and concerns as budding professionals and seasoned consumers of educational services – would the students still tune them out by tuning in to the laptops’ many offerings? I don’t think so. As I wrote in this post about the benefits of
experience-based (or active) learning, students need to own the learning process. They need to become active participants by
listening, responding and doing – all in a way that honors their needs and desires.
Once students are engaged with the course material and their professors in this interactive-participatory way, they’ll be able to benefit from the live connection talked about in this post from Kathy Sierra on
Why face-to-face still matters! The post explains why experts decree “live interaction with another human” “crucial to the brain” and superior to “any other form of communication.”
Posted by Arnie Herz on April 24, 2006
In the beginning of March, I (and others) posted on the sharp rise in client dissatisfaction demonstrated by the latest BTI Consulting Group poll of corporate counsel.
In the wake of this cyber commentary on its survey findings, BTI (via Senior Strategic Analyst Marcie L. Borgal) now offers its take on the matter in an article for The Law Marketing Portal titled The Declining Client Satisfaction Antidote.
Looking to the root cause of the malady at issue, Borgal identifies "three critical law firm behaviors that underlie falling client satisfaction." They are:
(1) Not keeping up with changing client needs
(2) Doing a poor job of articulating and delivering value
(3) Poor communication between law firms and clients
Proffering potential cures for these ills, Borgal states that we can "ensure alignment" between law firm services and clients needs by: engaging clients in an ongoing dialogue; honing our understanding of the client's business; and tailoring our "offerings to better meet the needs and demands of clients." She also suggests that we need to do a better job of demonstrating and communicating "the value delivered to clients before, during and after every engagement."
Highlighting the importance of boosting our communication skills, Borgal closes with the apt observation that "lack of communication serves to deepen the chasm between what clients want and what law firms deliver."
Posted by Arnie Herz on April 3, 2006
There's a lot of talk afoot about the latest law firm associate pay increases. Bruce MacEwen writes a great post addressing why young lawyers are paid so much. Adding his opinion about the law firm salaries arms race, Gerry Riskin says: "salaries alone do not buy you motivation, commitment, drive and the desired peak performance. They buy you compliance with extremely high billable hour targets. [T]he long term winners have to be competitive in their salaries but also must learn how to enhance the satisfaction of both lawyers and the clients they serve."
Riskin flags something really important here. The steady escalation of first year salaries since the mid-1980s has done nothing to stave off the equally steady rise in lawyer discontent. This pay more, bleed more paradigm is a surefire recipe for lawyer attrition and client dissatisfaction.
High pay might get law schools' best and brightest through BigLaw's door; but in the emerging age of the dual-centric worker, big money alone likely won't keep them toiling there year after year after year. Burn out, or its imminence, will send many young lawyers running to trade high pay for greater meaning, passion and purpose in their work life.
Law firms should heed the economics of lawyer depletion and invest heavily in employee engagement measures that - fostering fulfilling connections to colleagues, clients and company - turn today's young lawyers into the firm leaders of tomorrow.
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 28, 2006
Pursuant to my latest post on the importance of lawyer listening skills, both Gerry Riskin and Patrick J. Lamb pointed out that there's "a big difference between knowing that you should listen and knowing how to do so effectively" (to borrow Lamb's words and emphasis). We've all been stuck in the should zone at one time or another (think verbal commitment to diet and exercise made time and again). For whatever reason, inability or disinclination, we can't see our way clear from resolution to execution. When it comes to listening to our clients, lawyers pay a price for failing to take action. That cost is conveyed in this article on attorney-client assistance programs. Under these initiatives, state bars first direct complaints about lawyers to an "intake person" instead of leading with a formal complaint procedure. According to the piece, the complaints often stem from clients feeling unheard. As one quoted program director puts it: "If attorneys spent a little bit more time listening to their clients and talking to them about what's going on in their case [ ] I suspect this program would have a lot less business." The ripple effect of our listening lapses can also be gleaned from this Knowledge @ Wharton article on the exponential power of negative word-of-mouth [tipped by Ian McKee at The Power of Influence]. Tracking a recent customer dissatisfaction study, the piece states that people (read clients) are bound to talk about their negative consumer experiences and that their "complaints have an even greater impact on [people] who were not directly involved as the story spreads and is embellished." Researchers reported that almost half of the study's participants said that they've "avoided a store in the past because of someone else's negative experience." Since most lawyers survive and thrive on repeat business from clients and on client referrals, we simply can't afford the fallout from our failure to listen.
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 22, 2006
I've been closely following the cyber debate and dialog generated by Timothy L. O'Brien's New York Times article Why Do So Few Women Reach the Top of Big Law Firms? While I think it sheds light on a very important and thought-provoking subject, the article doesn't answer the title question. Nor does it do much to share the varied voices and stories of women who've opted out of Big Law partnership. Instead, we're asked to view the problem O'Brien spotlights, and its many possible causes, largely through a lens trained on a woman dedicated to Big Law practice and partnership for over a quarter century - Proskauer Rose's Bettina B. Plevan. The piece addresses a lawyer-life issue that engages our emotions. So, I hoped to hear more from women who've lived and breathed the often difficult decision to leave Big Law and/or its partnership track. (Ms. Plevan also seems to need some direct input from departing female colleagues, since she's left querying: "What de-motivates them to want to continue working in the law?") That's why I'm very grateful for the conversation the article's compelled in the blogosphere. The commentary surrounding posts by Carolyn Elefant; Patrick J. Lamb; Bruce MacEwen; The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog; and Monica Bay (among others) have given me some of the first-person insight I was seeking as I read O'Brien's coverage on Big Law's missing women.
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 9, 2006
In my last post on lawyer discontent and client dissatisfaction, I suggested that this dual malaise has a common cause: a breakdown of the lawyer-client relationship. There are many takes on what it takes to revitalize business relations in disrepair. Adding to the ensemble is "loyalty expert" Fred Reichheld's new book, The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth. I haven't read the book yet, but I sampled its message in Reichheld's recent article for Harvard's Working Knowledge called A Satisfied Customer Isn't Enough. According to Reichheld, companies need to comprehend the "economic value that results from building better customer relationships." There's a direct correlation between great customer relationships and a company's positive, long-term economic growth. To help businesses understand the value of "deep" customer relations, Reichheld came up with a system for measuring an organization's performance from the customer's perspective. The system involves an evaluation of company "promoters" - people who answer "yes" to the "ultimate question: would you recommend us to a friend?" and company "detractors" - customers who "generate negative word of mouth" and readily defect to the competition. The assessment yields what Reichheld terms the company's Net Promoter Score (NPS). As far as metrics go, I find this very interesting. Reichheld's insights pair well with a great post from morepartnerincome in which guest blogger John Remsen, Jr. sheds light on various law firm client feedback programs. For a different angle on facilitating strong lawyer-client connections, check out Jim Calloway's two part article on The Client-Centered Law Practice (and Part 2) [thanks to Dan Hull for the tip].
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 6, 2006
When I was a kid, I often pondered the age-old question: which came first, the chicken or the egg? Just when I thought I had the answer, someone would offer input that plunged me back into uncertainty. My memory of this childhood mental exercise was jarred by Gerry Riskin's recent post entitled Client Satisfaction with Law Firms Plummets. In it, Riskin reports that the latest BTI Consulting Group survey of corporate counsel found that only "30.7% of large and Fortune 1000 companies recommend their primary law firms" and that "an astonishing 53.7% of clients ousted their primary law firms in the past 18 months." In addition to capturing my attention, this post and information inspired commentary from bloggers Dan Hull, Tom Kane and Robert Ambrogi. In his post, Ambrogi relays a BTI principal's statement that a root cause of the reported unhappiness and attrition is law firm failure to keep up with what's important to clients. This is not the first report of widespread malaise among legal service consumers and it likely won't be the last. As I stated in an earlier post on the legal profession's Broken Windows, the typical lawyer-client relationship is in a state of decay and disrepair and both sides are suffering as a result. I could accept this as a given and move on to think about possible remedies. But, I just can't shake the begging question about the genesis of the malady: which came first, lawyer discontent or client dissatisfaction?
Posted by Arnie Herz on February 21, 2006
In a recent post on the culture of dissatisfaction, author, blogger and change agent Seth Godin discusses how Las Vegas - with its bright lights and lustful lure - both salves and fuels the discontent that's rapidly "accelerating through every market and community on Earth." People are "unhappy all the time," Godin asserts, and jump from person to person, product to product, service to service and experience to experience in a frenetic attempt to fill a void created by all this unhappiness. According to Godin, we can counter this epidemic malaise by building relationships with "real people." He says, "Relationships that make us feel counted upon, respected, trusted and valued cut through the ennui of dissatisfaction." I think Godin is onto something big here. But there's more under the hood. Meaningful relationships may very well stem the tide of dissatisfaction we're experiencing in, and outside of, the legal profession. Before we can meaningfully relate to others, however, we need to meaningfully connect (or re-connect) with ourselves. Somewhere along the line, many of us lose sight of our own greatness and aptitudes. We forget what fulfills us - that is, what sparks and supports our curiosity, interests and desires. It's this disconnect of self from self that's at the heart of the individual and societal depletion Godin depicts. So, unless we take steps to re-acquaint with ourselves, the relationships we forge with others might soothe - but likely won't cure - any discontent we're experiencing in the law and beyond.
Posted by Arnie Herz on February 15, 2006
Last week, Dan Hull of What About Clients? put out a call for commentary on Lovemarks - brands that inspire loyalty beyond reason - in the law. Dan's interest was sparked by this query/remark from Patrick Lamb of In Search of Perfect Client Service: "does anyone love their law firm and its brand enough to have the name of the firm permanently inked onto their body?" While Patrick was talking about client love, I took on his question and Dan's call from a different perspective. Dan's already posted a full screenshot of my remarks on Lovemark branding (thanks, Dan), so I'll just extract the core for you here: Because we're in a service profession, any law firm effort to imprint a Lovemark has to start with its service providers - the firm's lawyers and non-lawyer staff. These people have to be passionate about what they're doing; where they're doing it; and who they're doing it for. (To quote myself) "Without this internal passion core, law firm branding efforts might generate clients, but not the kind of clients who will shout the firm's praises from the rafters (or permanently ink its name on their bodies)." If a picture paints a thousand words, then the primary value of employee evangelists is beautifully rendered in this aptly-captioned photo passed along by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba of the Church of the Customer Blog. For a related viewpoint, check out the [non]billable hour, where guest blogger Ron Baker discusses the importance of harnessing the passion of our employee volunteers. Dave Lorenzo adds another dimension to the discussion with a Career Intensity blog post on the emergent individual economy.
Posted by Arnie Herz on February 10, 2006
Career passion is a topic I've addressed here multiple times in various forms. And it's one that comes up again and again in conversations I have with people attending my training and development programs. Many lawyers express a sense of loss: they tell me that the wonder and excitement that accompanied their first few days, weeks, months, years (choose one) of practicing law have vanished. They've shifted into autopilot and can't seem to come out of that rote space where they tend to pigeonhole clients and matters according to some black letter prescription. As I admit in these conversations, I can relate to this sense of loss. It's a depleting place to be because it impacts us on so many levels. This point is emphasized by Kathy Sierra in a recent post at Creating Passionate Users. She asserts that, when we adopt a "just-a-job-attitude" (or, as she puts it, when we start phoning it in) we damage our sense of self and our client connections. So, how do we go about un-doing the damage and re-igniting our passion for practicing law? While Sierra doesn't provide a definitive answer to this question, she does stress that it's not about our actual job (associate, partner, solo practitioner). It's about the act of lawyering itself. We need to "sit [ ] down and force [ourselves] to remember" what we loved about being a lawyer in those early days of wonder and excitement. Hopefully, these surfaced memories will provide the flint needed to re-spark our career passion.
Posted by Arnie Herz on January 16, 2006
This WSJ.com article discusses the Dilemma of the Third Years; the tendency for associates to leave law firms by the end of their third year of practice. After outlining the costs of such premature attrition - (1) "the average big law firm doesn't start recouping its cash flow investment in an associate until about midway through an associate's fourth year" and (2) the fleeing associates need to be replaced with more costly lateral hires - the article asks "Can law firms change the status quo?" Answering with a stirring "Maybe," the piece goes on to highlight the part that partners play in the attrition dilemma. It seems that many associates today are opting out of the law firm tenure track because they see just how grueling and unhappy partner life is. While it refers to one firm's "balanced hours" response to the call for reform from the top down, the article doesn't mention another, very viable approach to stemming the tide of associate attrition: firm-wide and one-on-one initiatives like the ones discussed in this overview of law firm coaching programs.
Posted by Arnie Herz on December 19, 2005
I've previously posted on the alleged work ethic divide between seasoned lawyers and newcomers to the profession. The topic is again put on the table via this article from CareerJournal.com; this thoughtful post by Chris Bailey at the Alchemy of Soulful Work and this one from Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users. Because they consider it from different angles, the three commenters afford us a well-rounded view of the issue. Notably, despite their different vantage points, they all suggest that the emergent generation gap derives as much from the demise of the "job-for-life" world as it does from the rise of a collective view of "work as secondary" to a meaningful life lived "outside the office."
Posted by Arnie Herz on December 13, 2005
This post from John Moore of Brand Autopsy discusses the business application of the Broken Windows Theory. As noted in this commentary and this one, it's a theory of community demise holding that "disorder in urban neighborhoods leads people to be disorderly." Metaphorically speaking, if you don't fix broken windows quickly, people will get the message that nobody cares and more vandalism and decay will follow. In his new book, Michael Levine applies this theory to the business world, opining that companies should place a premium on identifying and quickly repairing their broken windows - those aspects of their operation that signal an indifference to consumer satisfaction and that ward off customers. Given the escalating levels of client discontent and defection it's experiencing today, the legal profession would also benefit from employing this theory within its ranks. The attorney-client relationship window is broken. The question remains: How do we fix it? This is a topic I've addressed before here, here, here and here (to give you a sampling). As this article by blogger Ed Poll suggests, the window's disrepair results from a system-wide breakdown. And the fix requires a collaborative and comprehensive approach that starts in law school and continues in our law firms and professional organizations.
Posted by Arnie Herz on December 7, 2005
In this post and this one, I noted that lawyers can probably learn a lot from current discourse about the deterioration of typical doctor-patient relationships. Entering the conversation is this New York Times article chronicling the prevalence of "problem doctors" in today's medical profession. Acknowledging that there have always been arrogant, rude or dismissive practitioners, the piece observes that their number is increasing "as doctors get involved in medical systems that prioritize speed and technology." To counter this trend, some medical groups are starting to use patient surveys to assess and guide their doctors. The upswing in this kind of monitoring comes as "health maintenance and preferred provider groups [ ] are starting to pay doctors according to their performance." When a doctor receives low survey scores, remedial actions may include courses, counseling or training sessions designed to help them "learn to listen to patients and treat them with dignity and respect." These doctors also benefit from learning "simple ways to let patients tell their stories and to show empathy by responding to a patient's emotionally charged comments." Given that client dissatisfaction and defection are so prevalent today, law firms should consider sampling surveys and corrective measures like those used to foster positive doctor-patient relationships.
Posted by Arnie Herz on September 29, 2005
In this March 2005 post, I discussed how today's law schools are missing the opportunity to teach key skills practitioners need to build career success and satisfaction. One of the featured articles (now requiring access by registration) discussed a path to curriculum reform championed by Pace Law School's Dean Stephen J. Friedman. In that piece, he proposed that newly-minted lawyers will be productive sooner if they're educated in a trade school mode - that is, if they're trained to see how the various areas of law they study interface in a given legal matter. Friedman seconds his own call for change in this new commentary entitled A Practical Manifesto for Legal Education. Launching from the premise that law schools are really "professional schools," he states that "legal education must be brought into closer alignment with the need of law students to hit the ground running when they begin to practice law." According to Friedman, the current state of misalignment stems from a stunted "dialogue between legal academia and practicing lawyers on precisely how to go about creating effective new lawyers." The misfit is only exacerbated by the reign of the billable hour and rampant client dissatisfaction with underwriting legal training. With these factors in mind, Friedman previews what his decided, but not "radical," transformation of the legal academy might look like: "Examining legal education through the prism of practice areas," law schools will embrace a practice-oriented curriculum that allows students to build an "integrated combination of skills, knowledge and substantive law in one broad area -- such as litigation or corporate transactions." I agree that the time is ripe for law schools to reconsider how to meet the real-world needs of their students. But, as I've expressed before, I believe that any curriculum reform will fall short unless it promotes the dual aims of teaching tradework and building the human relations skills vital to optimal lawyering.
Posted by Arnie Herz on August 17, 2005
Rosa at the wonderful Talking Story blog directed me to this clip of author and speaker Marcus Buckingham discussing "the importance of using one's personal strengths in the workplace." There are a lot of thought-provoking observations packed into this little sound bite. Buckingham raises the question that's fueled his work to date: Why do so few of us have a chance to use our strengths - those things we enjoy most and do best - on the job? He does not supply an answer, but does cite a recent poll showing that the respondents spend only 17% of their working day doing things they really like to do. Asserting that this number is way too low, Buckingham declares his continuing interest in discovering how to build a better world that compels each of us to "identify and deploy the best of ourselves" in our chosen occupation. I wonder how many lawyers would have benefited from a law school curriculum designed to help us discover our individual strengths and match them to a particular area of the law or to a related field, such as dispute resolution or teaching.
Posted by Arnie Herz on July 22, 2005
What's behind the cycle of overwork and burnout plaguing the legal profession? This article suggests that it may be a lack of productivity. It seems that the "average American wastes more than two hours a day at work" as we "surf the Internet, socialize with colleagues, and conduct personal business." Such poor time management skills engender late nights and weekends on the job at the expense of our personal lives. According to the piece, one antidote to this inefficiency is "scheduling, prioritizing, and setting goals. That includes figuring out the three, four, or five things that produce the greatest results, and concentrating on those." At sidebar, the article offers some other handy tips for working smarter. Adding to the dialog on workplace productivity is this expose on Best Buy's three-year-old ROWE initiative. Short for "results-oriented work environment," ROWE allows Best Buy employees to "work when and where they like, as long as they get the job done." Although the "transition required a lot of deprogramming of old attitudes," employees give ROWE high marks, asserting that the freedom it affords "is changing their lives" and making them "more productive." One of the more unique, and tricky, aspects of Best Buy's program is that employees don't opt in or out individually. Rather, whole departments sign on to be part of ROWE as a unit. And what group has yet to give this highly praised flextime option a go? You guessed it - Best Buy's legal department.
Posted by Arnie Herz on July 13, 2005
This article on corporate culture (flagged by Carolyn Elefant at My Shingle), highlights the decaying "culture of the legal profession and the high cost that its predominant behaviors and values wreak on the industry." Drawing from a working paper by the MIT Workplace Center, the piece points to findings that the legal industry's "emphasis on `total commitment' as a basis to enter the partner ranks [ ] not only makes work-life balance unachievable, but will in the long run hurt law firms because it alienates large numbers of employees and potential employees while requiring unsustainable levels of growth in billable hours." This is not a novel observation, as discussed here and here. But, the question evidently remains: how can the legal profession stop the downward spiral and foster a positive workplace culture? As a good first step in this healthy direction, lawyer and author Stewart Levine (who I've previously posted about) offers a new survey-based assessment tool for decoding firm culture and understanding the "critical role" it plays "in the success and quality of any enterprise."
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 25, 2005
From the Worthwhile blog and contributor Curt Rosengren comes some interesting and disheartening data on workplace satisfaction in America. According to the post, of the 7,718 American workers polled in a recent survey, "only 12% are extremely satisfied, 20% feel very passionate, and less than 15% feel strongly energized by their work." Perhaps we would all benefit from a tutorial based on this recent post from Creating Passionate Users. Considering "what it looks like when people are passionate," contributor Kathy Sierra comes up with seven distinct atributes. People with a passion: "Evangelize, Connect, Learn, Improve, Show Off, Spend Time and Spend Money." While Sierra's referring to passionate consumers of goods or services, some of these passion markers also apply to fostering a passionate workforce. A company, such as a law firm, will benefit significantly if it has a corporate culture, vision, products and services that inspire its employees to: become company evangelists; connect with each other and others around corporate initiatives; learn and re-learn how to improve the company's offerings or business model; and spend time during and outside regular work hours striving to move the business forward.
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 23, 2005
This article and this one make good companion pieces about the fuzzy boundary between our personal and professional lives. The first article discusses the scourge of "overwork" in America. As more and more businesses look to boost their bottom line with fewer employees, we've seen the advent of a 40+ hour work week that's invaded our weekend and vacation time. We're also under the heavy influence of a culture in which people "define themselves by their work" as opposed to their "hobbies and other things." Because our sense of self is so bound up with our "success in business," we tend to wear our overwhelm as a badge of honor - as a testament to a job taken seriously and well done. While it attempts to put a humorous spin on this "inability" to distinguish "self from work," the second article speaks volumes about the current state of our profession when it proclaims: "While it may be mentally healthy to separate practicing law and home life, in many instances it is nearly impossible."
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 20, 2005
Like many others, I regularly read Seth Godin's blog. This recent post really struck a chord. In it, Godin states that fear of failure is a much overrated excuse for our failure to produce goods, services and other results that are remarkable. What really holds us back from achieving our goal of remarkability is our fear of criticism. This fear is especially insidious because, as Godin says, "the criticism doesn't actually have to occur for the fear to set in. Watch a few people get criticized for being innovative and it's pretty easy to persuade yourself that the very same thing will happen to you if you're not careful." Godin rightly proclaims people who deliver unconstructive criticism "cowards" for using their "power to injure without giving you any information to help you to do better next time." He goes on to offer these words to ponder on the road to remarkability:
"If I get criticized for this, will I suffer any measurable impacts? Will I lose my job, get hit upside the head with a softball bat or lose important friendships?" If the only side effect of the criticism is that you will feel bad about the criticism, then you have to compare that bad feeling with the benefits you'll get from actually doing something worth doing. Being remarkable is exciting, fun, profitable and great for your career. Feeling bad wears off."
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 16, 2005
Since I'm in the midst of some major business changes (all good), I was compelled to read Spencer Johnson's Who Moved My Cheese? , a short book written in allegory style that's helped many people consider, and reconsider, how they handle a constant in today's world - change. After reading it, I happened upon a recent Fast Company article entitled Change or Die. It opens with this compelling question: "What if a well-informed, trusted authority figure said you had to make difficult and enduring changes in the way you think and act? If you didn't, your time would end soon -- a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change really mattered? When it mattered most?" I figured it a rhetorical question. Of course people would change when faced with this do-or-die scenario. Apparently, I was way off. According to the piece, the odds are 9 to 1 against change. When faced with a health, business or other type of upheaval, it seems people want to change, but can't. Apparently, the problem is not that we're incapable of change. We just rarely get the right kind of motivation. We aren't wired to change via appeals to our intellect alone. We need to be convinced of the need for change on an emotional level. But, as the article points out, "that kind of emotional persuasion isn't taught in business schools, and it doesn't come naturally to the technocrats who run things -- the engineers, scientists, lawyers, doctors, accountants, and managers who pride themselves on disciplined, analytical thinking." So, what's the recourse for those of us who want to foster change in our businesses and beyond? We first need to reframe our approach and promote change using a "positive, inspiring, and emotionally resonant" narrative that appeals to people with diverse mind-sets and values. In addition to this type of reframing, the piece instructs, people tend to respond better to bigger, or more radical, change efforts. They're also more likely to accept and sustain change if there's a support system in place to help them along.
Posted by Arnie Herz on May 11, 2005
I previously wrote about Tim Sanders and his terrific book Love is the Killer App . His new book, The Likeability Factor, is out and I can't wait to read it. According to his official site, in this book, Sanders extrapolates on the basic theory that "people who are well liked are more apt to get what they want out of life than those who are disliked" by outlining the "four personality traits he says contribute to a person's likeability—namely, friendliness, relevance (do you connect on interests or needs?), empathy and 'realness' (genuineness or authenticity)." In my experience, most lawyers are not well-versed in the value of being real, empathic and likeable. In fact, most rainmaking seminars teach us how to extol our own (or our firm's) virtues in arm's length interactions that are more robotic and rote than warm and personal. As this recent Inc.com article suggests, people who eschew intimacy in favor of the "let's talk about me" school of rainmaking are missing the boat: "They're building transactional, peripheral, unimportant contacts. They're making all kinds of introductions without ever really connecting. They're not building relationships. They're passing out business cards." If you're curious about your likeability factor, Sanders provides this short self-assessment exercise(pdf).
Posted by Arnie Herz on April 11, 2005
Here's yet another perspective on the waning public perception of lawyers. In this article, "Humorist-at-Law" Sean Carter suggests that a "solution to our image problem" might be a lawyer-fueled reality show modeled after the popular Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Instead of making over the life of a "hapless" straight man, the "Legal Fab Five" (described by Carter in comic detail) would "use their legal skills to enhance the lives of laymen." Whatever you think of Carter's tongue-in-cheek suggestion, it raises an important point. Many lawyers take themselves way too seriously. This air of self-importance distances us from the people we regularly deal with, putting them off and perpetuating the stereotype of the cold and soulless advisor. An infusion of a little lightness and humor into our daily practice just might ease the negative perception of our profession that we've helped foster.
Posted by Arnie Herz on April 6, 2005
I've discussed the public's perception of lawyers here and here. There are many different views on why lawyers are often negatively portrayed by the mainstream media and disparaged in water cooler conversations. In this post from the new group blog, Between Lawyers (let me officially join in the rousing welcome), contributor Denise Howell suggests a home remedy for this common public misperception - blogging. According to Howell, lawyer blogs afford the masses "a more complete picture of the humans comprising the profession." As more law blogs take root and mature, Howell proposes, "the harder it will be to generalize about how evil we are, the more accountable the jerks and lameheads will be forced to become, and the easier it will be to help clients do business and dissipate conflicts with fewer undue lawsuits and less undue rancor." I agree that well done blogs can raise lawyers' standing in the eyes of cyber-savvy citizens. But, for a broader image boost, we need to reconsider the way we regularly interact with our clients, adversaries and the press. What kinds of messages do we routinely impart about ourselves and other lawyers? Do we extol traits like empathy, honesty and civility? Or, do we consciously or otherwise sanction animosity, war-room tactics and arrogance as par for the course of everyday lawyering? The public will not change their negative opinion of us until law schools, law firms, bar groups and, most importantly, each of us take steps to uplift the profession from the inside out.
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 28, 2005
My wife and I met in our last year at Fordham University School of Law. She was not a big fan of typical law school exams because she felt they didn't really test her understanding of the law and how it applies in real-world contexts. To add insult to injury, having "missed" a number of classes, I used her notes and outlines to study at the last minute and still outdid her on the tests (o.k., I couldn't resist sharing that bit of information). So, you can imagine how vindicated my wife felt when she read this article in which professor Steven Lubet derides the average American law school exam as "positively perverse." The big problem, he says, is that the exams aren't "really designed to test the skills involved in law practice." Indeed, they offer "no opportunity for reflection, research, reconsideration or redrafting" - an oversight that might very well constitute malpractice in real life. So why do law schools continue to give tests that miss the mark? In Lubet's opinion, it's because they're easy to grade and "do a great job of dividing test takers into measurable categories." Bringing his point home, Lubet states that possessing those qualities that "separate highly successful practitioners from mediocrities," such as "diligence, thoroughness, collaboration, consultation, fact investigation, and, crucially, the willingness to admit error and start over from scratch [ ] will actually put you at a disadvantage on law school exams. Far better to rely on flashes of insight and an ability to write on the fly."
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 23, 2005
My posts here, here and here (among others) discuss how law schools today are missing the opportunity to teach key skills practitioners need to build career success and satisfaction. Given my interest in this topic, I was glad to find ambivalent imbroglio's post on student efforts to address, and dialogue about, the current state of legal education. I also came across this recent article weighing in on the subject. It concerns a call for curriculum reform sounded by Pace Law School's new dean, Stephen Friedman. Recognizing the need for a "powerfully different way of looking at what we're doing as law schools," Friedman puts forth the "revolutionary notion" of creating happier lawyers by better aligning legal education with "the needs of law firms." To Friedman, a happy lawyer is a productive lawyer. And newly-minted lawyers will be productive sooner if they're educated in a trade school mode - that is, if they're trained to see how the various areas of law they study interface in a given legal matter. I'm all for technical proficiency, but that's not what breeds happiness in our profession. Nor is it what law schools fail to impart. As law students, we learn how to translate human relations into rules, rights and responsibilities - the three "rs" of legal education. As a result, we're well-versed in transforming complex situations into a dry set of facts and applicable laws. But, we gain little to no insight into meeting the needs of the people behind the legal matters we take on. Law schools will go a long way towards fostering happier lawyers and a healthier profession if they recognize and teach the human relations skills that are so vital to optimal lawyering.
Posted by Arnie Herz on March 7, 2005
I've previously posted here and here on the apparent divide between old guard and "Generation Y" lawyers. According to the latest article on the subject, lawyers born in or after 1978 "are getting a bad rap for what some say is a flabby work ethic and an off-putting sense of entitlement." More seasoned practitioners deride their youngers as ungrateful and lacking ambition, initiative and energy. Those disputing this unflattering portrayal say that the well-educated group of up-and-coming lawyers "wants to grow professionally and advance to partnership," but simply refuses to do so at the expense of their personal lives. Instead of name-calling and head shaking, lawyers old and new need to come together for candid discussions about the marked differences in their priorities and perspectives on life in the law. It seems that there will have to be some kind of species-wide adaptation for the profession to thrive into the future.
Posted by Arnie Herz on January 17, 2005
During my vacation, I met a retired lawyer who shared his views on the alleged atrophy of professionalism many lawyers complain of today. He believes this is nothing new. As an up-and-coming partner at a Midwestern firm, he heard the same complaint from his mentors who had heard it from their own mentors and so on back in time. By his own admission, early in his career, he relished a good legal battle. If an adversary was rude, boastful or downright underhanded, it only increased his drive to succeed. As he matured as a lawyer and individual, however, he began to lose patience with insolent and deceptive practitioners. He saw their tactics as unnecessary hindrances to the legal process that squandered the resources of lawyers, law firms, courts and clients. So, in his world view, there likely is no rising incivility and decaying decorum in the profession these days. They're age-old problems. But, he did acknowledge that times have changed in that lawyers, educators and journalists are now ready and willing to bring these issues to light to facilitate profession-wide reform.
Posted by Arnie Herz on January 5, 2005
Thanks to the always interesting Adam Smith, Esq. blog for pointing out this article on the "tyranny" of the legal profession's billable hour standard. The ABA and other observers have linked this accounting method to the high rates of attrition and burnout among lawyers. Law students are transitioning into the work force with unrealistic expectations about the "real-world practice of law." They aren't prepared for the personal sacrifice that often comes with the billable hour territory. Like others, I believe that the billable hour is compromising the legal profession on many levels. But I see its eventual demise - or significant weakening - resulting from a combination of forces: client demand for alternative fee arrangements; law firm employee-retention initiatives; and, trickle-down demand from a generation of newly-minted lawyers who, educated about the nuances of the billable hour, simply refuse to forego work-life balance.
Posted by Arnie Herz on December 28, 2004
In the wake of the election-fueled lawyer bashing, it's great to find articles like this one celebrating practitioners who regularly give of themselves to better their communities. The pro bono efforts of the New York attorneys cited here are impressive. Like others, I believe that such volunteerism can't be mandated. But law schools and firms can, and should, sponsor educational forums on the many upsides of pro bono work. When I was a third year law student, I was very inspired by a school-sponsored program in which fellow students discussed their public interest work. So much so, that I quickly sought volunteer opportunities when I started as a Biglaw associate. And it's something I continue to enjoy today as pro bono outside counsel to an international humanitarian organization. I suppose that's why I'm a big believer in the old adage: If you plant a seed, it will grow.
Posted by Arnie Herz on December 11, 2004
We all had ringside seats for some unbridled lawyer bashing during the recent presidential campaign. This article discusses the downward spiraling of "the lawyer in pop culture" from demigod to degenerate. According to the piece, today's negative film and TV portrayals of lawyers "are just symptoms of the precipitous drop in the public's perception of the legal profession over the past 25 years." The writer gives us some food for thought at the end of the piece: What will happen to the legal profession if the pernicious celluloid lawyer becomes so indelible in the public mind that consumers, jurors and others can't separate fiction from fact in dealing with real world practitioners?
Posted by Arnie Herz on December 8, 2004
I've drawn parallels between the legal and medical professions before. I'm doing it again. This New York Times article discusses what doctors call the "hand on the doorknob" phenomenon - the tendency for patients to stifle important information until they're halfway out the door of the doctor's office. Considering the cause of this phenomenon, the writer - a doctor - opines that perhaps "the formality of the standard doctor-patient visit precludes revealing such personal, vulnerable details." She goes on to state, "Maybe only when patients are fully dressed and standing upright, somewhat removed from the medical setting, if only by a few feet, do they regain enough humanity and strength to reveal such things." I do think that the fast pace and sterility of the typical medical visit has a chilling effect on these kinds of "personal" patient revelations. But the problem also exists because many doctors fail to take the time to look beyond the physical form in front of them to address the thinking and feeling person behind. The same holds true for the many lawyers who assess their clients' issues solely in terms of black letter rights and responsibilities. Overlooking or simply disregarding the large role that emotions, relationships, hopes and dreams can play in legal matters, they often misdiagnose the case and leave their clients wholly underserved.
Posted by Arnie Herz on November 29, 2004
I think that this article about using surveys and in-person interviews to monitor client satisfaction pairs well with this one on appreciative inquiry (AI). A number of firms are paying outside consultants big bucks to go out in the field and assess firm-client relationships. Apparently today's firms are feeling pressured to remain in their clients' good favor as "corporate law departments are using 25 percent to 30 percent fewer law firms than they did three years ago." While I understand the need for this type of outreach, I think that firms looking to generate and keep business also must do a bit of introspection. That is, they need to survey their own lawyers and staff to see how they feel about client relations and about the law firm environment in general. A great way to accomplish this type of internal audit is via AI - a process of asking questions aimed at discerning what works so that people and businesses can do more of it. In sharp contrast to the typical "problem-centered approach to bringing about change," AI asks people to "recall and tap into positive achievements and stories that strengthen and inspire." The article provides sample AI questions concerning attorney/employee satisfaction. Here are some that, to me, are equally pertinent to fostering strong attorney-client and firm-client relationships:
What situations or circumstances created your loyalty to this firm?
How has your firm created a culture of mutual trust, loyalty, and respect?
Describe a situation in which you felt valued and respected by a client.
Describe a situation in which your commitment to family was supported by your organization.
Describe a situation in which your commitment to community was supported by your organization.
How do you stay energized and inspired?
Describe a shift in your thinking that gives you hope for yourself, firm, or community.
Posted by Arnie Herz on November 25, 2004
Carolyn Elefant of My Shingle has written a great article on the everyday ways lawyers can express gratitude to colleagues, staff, court clerks, clients and others we often forget to properly acknowledge. I particularly like her idea of remembering to thank the legal profession that supports us. Along these same lines, I feel it's important to thank yourself for all the great service you provide to your clients, business associates and larger community. Self-acknowledgement is not about ego. It's about duly valuing the very important contributions you make in the world every day. I'm also grateful for being able to publish my thoughts to the four corners via this blog. It gives me an extra measure of professional and personal satisfaction. I wish a very happy thanksgiving to all of you celebrating today.
Posted by Arnie Herz on November 24, 2004
I cut my lawyer-teeth as a litigation associate in the New York office of Weil Gotshal & Manges. Although I left big firm life en route to my solo career, I'm grateful for the experience I gained there. I learned all the basics and intricacies of litigating complex matters and got to work with some terrific people. So, I was happy to come across this article about a Weil Gotshal paralegal who, with some helping hands, overcame adversity and created "her new life in a new land." The story is uplifting both for its depiction of human trial and triumph and for it's more implicit message that, despite popular belief, big firms are not made up of heartless automatons. They are simply microcosms of the larger world where people regularly step up for those in need and serve the greater good.
Posted by Arnie Herz on October 21, 2004
This interesting article compels us to consider the high costs of everyday conflicts. The writer contends that we live in a rapidly changing society firmly rooted in the "dialectic, right/wrong, either/or patterns that originated in Aristotelian logic." This pervasive "win-lose" mentality has coupled with the disintegration of educational institutions, religious communities and the extended family to produce a culture more concerned about "rights" and "entitlements" than "responsibilities towards others." The article suggests that the many people who are starting to question this cultural norm would benefit from a candid evaluation of the real costs of conflict in their lives (the direct cost; the cost of professional help; the opportunity cost; the emotional cost; the relationship cost). With these costs laid out, instead of spending scare resources "rehashing the past" in "the 'battle' that is traditional conflict resolution," people might seek outcomes that address broken relationships and reflect what they really want for the future.
Posted by Arnie Herz on September 13, 2004
Here is a great piece about the dressing down some not-so-civil litigants received in an order from U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks of Austin, Texas. The judge issued the pointed order in an attempt to stop the madness propagated by "lawyers he felt were trying harder to attack each other than litigate their 20-month-old case." Thinking it high time that the litigants stop wasting time, get a life and consider attending anger management classes, the judge wrote: "Frankly, the undersigned would guess the lawyers in this case did not attend kindergarten, as they never learned how to get along well with others." After receiving the order, plaintiff's lead counsel copped "the case has spawned an unusual number of motions—including three motions for protective orders by the plaintiffs—all of which have required hearings before the judge." He also conceded the parties "used up a lot of the court's valuable time on disputes that [ ] were avoidable." From my experience, I believe the kind of abuse the court tried to check here is not uncommon. I think we'd see far less of it if more jurists and lawyers followed Judge Sparks' lead and countered such abuse with a zero tolerance policy.
Posted by Arnie Herz on August 25, 2004
The shifting of law firm demographics and in lawyers' definitions of success are among the topics discussed in this interesting article from the ABA's Law Practice Magazine. The piece considers how law firms can "bridge the generational divide" between associates and partners who have values and expectations that are "poles apart." Unlike "Traditionalist Lawyers" (born before 1946), the legions of "Generation Y (or Millennial) Lawyers" (born after 1980) now entering the extremely competitive legal workforce are laden with student loan debt, tech savvy, impatient to progress and define rewards "in terms of financial success, flexibility, freedom, autonomy and increase in opportunities." The article sets out a few pointers and recommendations on meeting the unique needs of this new breed of lawyer. It also cautions that firms failing to do so will "stay stuck in old-school, passé management modes and face problems with recruitment, retention and other issues."
Posted by Arnie Herz on August 9, 2004
Both My Shingle and Ernie the Attorney have commented on a post from Anonymous Lawyer that's ostensibly about the perils of mixing big firm and family life. Having worked in one of the country's biggest firms, at a boutique litigation practice, in a small partnership and as a solo, I can say that the dysfunction and screwed up priorities it depicts are not just byproducts of big firm life. You'll find people who place work over family and avoid spending time with their loved ones in every type of law firm across America. While the pull to survive and succeed can easily throw our priorities out of whack, it's up to us to own up to our responsibility for the imbalance and to do something about it - both on an individual and larger professional level.
Posted by Arnie Herz on July 16, 2004
This article from Time Online Edition gives some new insight into how stress affects our immune system. In a recent meta study of 30 years of stress research, psychologists found that "stress triggers a variety of changes in the immune system — some beneficial, some decidedly less so — depending on how long the stress lasts and whether there is an end in sight." Such tasks as public speaking tend to boost the body's fast-acting immune circuitry for warding off infection and healing wounds. By contrast, short-term stressors with high stakes, like a bar exam, appear to suppress immune responses. Layoffs or other occurrences that "alter a person's role in society or sense of himself and show no sign of ending" - called "chronic stressors" - also significantly compromise immune function. On a positive beat, noting a finding that optimistic law students have more robust immune systems than their pessimistic peers, the article concludes that possessing such "psychological quirks" as a sunny outlook can actually protect you from the ravages of stress.
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 30, 2004
This article about a lawyer disbarred for excessive confrontational behavior pairs well with this one about a judge who, acknowledging an "inability to back down when confronted," resigned from the bench while under investigation for mistreating lawyers and litigants. Both pieces point up how emotions, and the ability to handle them, infuse and affect lawyer professionalism.
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 24, 2004
At The [non]billable hour, Matt Homann has invited readers to chronicle five things they would change about the practice of law, if they had the power. The responses already posted run the gamut from proposed changes in the way lawyers and their firms serve clients and embrace technology to innovations in professionalism. It's very interesting to see the how differently the contributors construe the two key elements of the inquiry: "change" and "the practice of law."
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 23, 2004
There's been a lot of discussion about lawyers bending or distorting the truth in the name of zealous representation. If it's hard for some lawyers to tell where the zealousness ends and dishonesty begins, this article from the Christian Science Monitor suggests that the difficulty reflects a growing trend in our country. According to the piece, in "the high-pressure, high-stakes environment of 21st- century America, lying has for many apparently become a way of life." While people know that lying is wrong, the piece relates, they do it anyway because they feel it's the only way to get the success they want. From doctoring resumes to plagiarism to defrauding investors, the "cheating culture" has taken firm root and, glorified by such consumer staples as reality T.V., shows no sign of decay. What can be done to counter the trend? One solution, according to the article, is to fix "winner-take-all" incentive systems that engender excessive competitiveness and insecurity. Another is to educate "the next generation" about the high costs of deception and shame.
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 17, 2004
I recently finished Thane Rosenbaum's book The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What's Right. While my personal take on the legal profession's future falls more into the "glass half full" camp, Rosenbaum accurately highlights some of the systemic weaknesses that need redressing. Throughout the book, he chronicles the need for lawyers to once again regard themselves as members of a healing profession, noting that "a client with a grievance is not that much different from a patient in pain" and that the "origins of what brings many litigants to the courthouse are indignities done to the spirit." He also points to a critical breakdown of communication between most lawyers and their clients. Trained to think only in terms of legal rights and interests and unschooled in "the art of empathy," Rosenbaum opines, lawyers simply can't hear "the language of grievance" their clients are speaking. Whether or not you agree with his contention that the legal system/profession lacks a moral dimension, Rosenbaum provides a lot of food for thought on this important subject.
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 11, 2004
In this article New York State Bar Association president Kenneth G. Standard discusses his plans to put the issue of "quality of life in the profession near the top of his agenda." Stating that "law has definitely become more of a business and less of a profession," Standard acknowledges that "lawyer's lives have grown much harsher in recent years." To help nip the problem of lawyer dissatisfaction in the bud, Standard has "planned outreach and other initiatives to help students make a more informed decision about becoming lawyers."
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 7, 2004
According to this synopsis of an American Bar Association national survey, lawyers need to be better communicators and should be taught "the importance of lawyer-client relationships in law school." Although a bit dated, the study offers a consumer's-eye-view of the legal profession that's still relevant. You can download the study, including an interesting segment on What Americans Like/Do Not Like About Lawyers (pdf).
Posted by Arnie Herz on June 4, 2004
This article and another from the Boston Globe highlight the problems of lawyer burnout and client discontent besetting today's legal profession. Although they probably go too far in suggesting that the average lawyer "hates what he does," the articles do a lot to bring this professional "crisis" to the public's attention. They also convey the upbeat message that crisis begets a golden opportunity for practitioners and educators to revamp the way law is currently taught and practiced in this country.
